night hunter

hunter. 37. she/they. tier two. points: 235 pts crime(s):

[nightxhunter]

zenith-moi​:

“My condolences towards the entire world.” She says, a little wry, as she imagines Robert Courtney on the top of the heap. She should check in on Jase, she thinks, again. She had before, but neither of  them had really been in the right mind, and neither of them were really the type to sit down and have a straightforward heart to heart about childhood trauma and bad fathers. Her father was a different creature entirely, which may have been part of her hesitance. He was a good man. He cared about her. He would have never treated her badly, he would have never let anyone else treat her badly either. He had been strict, and had some strange methods for raising a young girl, but he had been the best father she could have asked for. Still, it must have been hard for Jase in the tower. She might not ask right out if he was feeling fucked up about his bullshit family, but maybe just hanging out with him for a few hours would be a good thing. 

She files those thoughts away for later, a reminder to follow through on them and make sure he doesn’t slip from between her fingers. She focuses on Hunter again, when she’s made the mental note, and considers how hard it all must have been for her as well. Facing the man who had left her for dead. Having to save him when he wasn’t really worthy of it at all. Hunter should have been allowed to leave him to rot, but she had done her job instead, and pulled him out from the tower that would have crushed him in its rubble. 

And Hunter, who didn’t have as many connections within the Collective as other people did, had been left to deal with it mostly on her own. On her own, with an injured brother, another responsibility for her to deal with, another weight on her shoulders that she had to struggle with. Zenith wishes that she could have tracked the girl down sooner, could have offered her help when she really needed it, when she had come to the meeting point after the tower covered in blood. But there had been things to do, and her own wounds to clean up, and Zenith had been wrapped up in her own pain –– the things she would never let anyone else help with, as she tried to clean up her own wounds, as she ignored how much she would have liked someone else to help her. She could have asked Shadow, but Zenith hated to look weak. 

She purses her lips, and looks at Hunter with softer eyes. “I’m sorry you had to deal with all that. WIth Flame Thrower. Next time he’s in danger I feel like you’ve earned the right to let him rot in hell.” She shakes her head, then, looks down at her own hands, worries a thumb over her palm. “I’m sorry about everything.”

“You know you can be mad about it all, right? Punch and scream and rage. I’ll listen.” 

The rage that was a near constant for her, lowers in intensity as Zenith speaks. And she’s tired of it, of being so mad all the time, of having to be mad for herself because the rest of the world refuses to see Clint Courtney for who he truly is. Darren had been a good distraction these last few days, but it did little but fan the anger already in her, over how much time the two of them have now lost with each other just because of Clint and his need to destroy everything that didn’t go his way. 

“I’ve done that for the last two years,” she confesses, shoulders slumping as the exhaustion settles back into her bones. “I’ve punched and screamed and raged my way from one place to another, and I’m tired of having only that to do. I’m tired of carrying this anger and having to release it on someone else rather than the person that caused it.” 

She wants to be rid of this, but she isn’t sure how, nor does she expect Zenith to have that answer for her. She had tried looking for that answer with Jase, but in the end knew that that was too much to ask of him, not when he’d been harboring his own trauma for far longer than she had. 

There’s another, she knows deep down, that she should try to approach this topic with. After everything that happened in the Tower with Lazarus she hasn’t been able to shake loose the aching feeling that their connection with Clint runs deeper than either are prepared to dig into, but they need to... she thinks. Or at the very least she should see if the feeling in her gut is one with merit, or simply her grasping for someone else to hang onto. 

“I’m sorry,” she sighs after a moment, bringing her hand up to rub at her throbbing temple, “I shouldn’t be throwing this on you.” 

.

[nightxhunter]

zenith-moi​:

She watches Hunter, wondering for a moment if she made the wrong decision to come here, to offer help to the woman in front of her. But she’d make a hundred wrong decisions, in the effort to win some semblance of a relationship with Hunter, even just a friendship. She’d embarrass herself by trying, she was sure, but at the end of the day she had to check up on Hunter eventually, had to see her again, had to see her not drenched in blood. She wanted to know that Hunter was okay. 

It was the kind of sentimentality that Zenith didn’t usually want to deal with, the kind of thing she would usually run away from. But she was tired of running away from herself, from the softer corners of her mind that preyed on her long hidden desire to have someone connect with her. She’d checked up on all of her other friends, but this was different. This was more intense, because Hunter was something different. 

She quirks a tiny smile, at the mention of Hyde. Yeah, she had heard that story. And she’d been wanting to talk to Hyde for days now, but for once in her life she didn’t think she should menace Sebastian into letting his other side come out. The kid had clearly been through a lot, and as much as Zenith disliked Seb, she didn’t have the heart to make things worse for him, when he had that look around his eyes, when the Tower must have been traumatic for him. Fearmonger… she wouldn’t have liked to go up against that. She has a morbid curiosity about what she might have seen. But she can’t imagine that it was pretty. Hell, she might have accidentally shot Mind Master herself if she had been put in the same situation. But she nods her head, despite it all. “Sure, he couldn’t blame you for that.” 

And Zenith tries not to be disappointed, that Hunter doesn’t need anything from her. Because in all honesty, she’s felt useless for the last few days. It’s the crash after a hard fight. Zenith had been useful enough in the tower, had gotten through it all, and came back with her team. But now, she was in the midst of a drama she didn’t really know all that much about – and no one really seemed to want her help, or to bring her into it. And she’d like to help someone. She’d like to make sure Hunter is okay. But she won’t push it, if Hunter doesn’t want her involved. 

She’s surprised, genuinely, by Hunter’s question. And it shows on her face, just for a moment, before she clears it away again and turns her smile into something much cockier. The aches and pains that came along with her injuries were a lingering embarrassment, because she was the one who had managed to get herself hurt. The smile pulls at the mostly-healed cut on her cheek, from Morningstar’s searing blades of light. “Oh, I’m good.” She nods, slow. “Got banged around a bit, but I’ve had a hell of a lot worse.” 

And she bites her lip then, considering. Because she doesn’t want to turn around and leave, yet. “I got to knock Old Man Courtney out with an experimental stun gun, so… I kind of had a blast. If zombie Femme Fatale hadn’t been there, I would have rated it a solid 10/10, as far as missions go.” 

Zenith seems... disappointed, she thinks, when she doesn’t offer her something to help her with. But Hunter honestly can’t think of anything she needs, her mind has been to occupied lately with everything that happened at the Tower with Darren, to really reflect on what she needs. And she honestly doesn’t even know what she needs at this point, or what Zenith if anything that Zenith could do to change that. She’s still not certain in all of this, just where the two of them stood with one another. 

The last time they talked, she’d voiced her own thoughts on the matter as well as she could have, had told her that she didn’t want her to keep her distance anymore, that she didn’t want to be left alone. And she does feel the small stab of annoyance at the thought that that was precisely what had happened again between them since the attack, then again, she knows just as well that she could have as easily bridged that gap herself too. 

“I had my own run in with a Courtney, along with the grossest lesson on the Old Testament in history,” she says bitterly, although her bitterness isn’t directed at Zenith but more at Clint fucking Courtney. “But all is well in the world again, right? Golden Boy is back in the game, and now with Dimitri out of commission, looks like Robert is going to get the seat at the top that he’s been vying for for ages.” 

She lets out a steadying breath, once her small rant is done, which perhaps that’s what she needed after all. To let herself get mad over having to do what she did back at the Tower, to fucking save the asshole that tried to kill her, and have to put to the side her thoughts on whatever the hell was going on between him and Lazarus, because there were other pressing matters at hand. 

[nightxhunter]

jetxstreamx​:

Jetstream nods his head, along with the words that leave her mouth. The delicate way she plans this out, the way they’ll take care of Darren, because there isn’t any question that they will. Jetstream has never been able to walk away from someone that he cared about, especially not when they were sick and wounded. It was probably a good way to repay Darren, even, for all of the things he had done for Jet over the last few months. Offering him a place to stay, protecting him from the people who wanted to hurt him, caring about him so much more intensely than Jetstream probably deserved. 

His mind sticks, on the idea of Darren making that decision. That was a topic that had come up, in the vaguest sense, over the last few weeks. Being forced to make a choice one way or another, people finding out about them and taking issue with it. After talking to Banshee, that worry had been compounded –– the threat that White would find out and cast him out for real, that everyone would turn against him. Darren had assured him it would never happen, that no one would ever force him to make that choice, that he would take the fall. But now, Jet was pretty sure Darren would make that decision without prompting. It wouldn’t have much to do with him at all, in the face of other, bigger relaities. 

He swallows, as he thinks of it, lets his eyes skate up to look at his face, before he looks back at her. “We talked about it, a little bit. Him being a Guardian, me being a villian. What would happen if things got… if someone had to make a choice.” He shakes his head, and almost feels guilty about it. “He said it wouldn’t have to be me.” 

And he thinks about that, feels the flush of affection again, the feeling that his devotion hasn’t been misplaced this time. “I think ––” He tries for a smile, looking at her. “I think he’s stuck around for as long as he has because of you, kind of. For your memory. But that pesky sense of duty of his is a big thing too. But I guess we’ll be there, whatever else happens. Whatever he decides to do.”

It doesn’t really surprise her, what Jetstream says next, that Darren had made the decision to take on that burden himself when it came to the eventual decision that would be made. It does surprise her that the decision stems from a relationship, considering how god awful he used to be at them, but it seems like he’s being more mindful this time, whether it be because he’d finally learned his lesson, or because Jetstream has made him want to change. 

Her face does fall though, when he mentions what her role to play in all of this was. She knew to a certain extent that her “death” was involved in getting Darren to join the Guardians, but it still stings to think that he walked into that lion’s den willingly, without realizing it was those very lions that sought to see her dead. 

“When I tell him what happened to me, and who was responsible for that, his loyalties will change- that I’m sure of.” She lets out a sigh, as she looks back over to Darren, still deep in his slumber. “But I can just as easily see him stay, to keep a closer eye on Clint, as I can see him leave to get the hell away from him.” 

Giving Darren’s hand a small squeeze, she leans back in the chair she knew would be her bed that night. “But you’re right....” she says after a moment, nodding her head in determination, before looking back at to Jetstream, “whatever happens the two of us will be there.” 

[nightxhunter]

zenith-moi​:

( the manor, a few days after the tower attack / @nightxhunter​ ) 

She takes the time to leave things settle, after the Tower. In all honesty, she would have liked to seek Night Hunter out on the same night, but she didn’t imagine that either of them had been in the right shape for an emotional reuinion when they hadn’t even really sorted out what was going on between them. It still felt raw, and a little uncertain, even after their heart to heart in the training room. Zenith didn’t really know what they were, anymore, or what they could be. But she’d been worried about Night Hunter, after all of their rescue missions. If she hadn’t been a little loopy herself after her fight, she definitely would have gone to find Hunter sooner. 

One of the things that Zenith hated was that she could still get hurt. She could fly, and she could shoot literal beams of scalding hot light out of her eyes, and she was smart enough to solve nearly any problem you put in front of her… but at the end of the day, she was still made of so many squishy, vulnerable human parts. And she’d been too stubborn to let someone like Nightingale near her, so her side still burned with pain when she moved wrong, and her cheek still bore the delicate little cut it had earned from Morningstar’s glowing blade of light. 

Still, she had gotten away relatively unscathed, when you compared her to some of the other people who had been stuck in the Tower. They had all been through hell. Lazarus looked like they were going to fall down dead, from the small glimpse she had gotten of them. And Mind Master –– Mind Master got shot by Hyde, which would have been a little hilarious if it was someone else, if it wasn’t for the Night Hunter of it all. 

So she lets things settle, and then she seeks Night Hunter out. She’s lucky to find her, she knows, with the amount of time shes been spending with her brother. But she must have needed to come get something, because her door is open just a crack, and Zenith nudges it a little wider, knocks on the frame, peeks inside. 

“I heard about Darren,” She leads with, the same straightforward way she starts most of her conversations. No preamble, straight to the point. And she feels more relaxed, now, that she knows Night Hunter probably won’t turn her away, probably won’t punch her in the face. 

“Do you need anything?” She asks, because that feels important, when Dylan is likely holding everything up on her own right now. “Can I help?”

She spends the days following the attack on Guardian Tower, split between the hospital and the manor- and then finally, Darren’s place and the manor, once he’s given the clear to go home. It’d been a complete whirlwind, having him back again after so many years, but they’ve seemed to fall back into somewhat of their old rapport with each other- apart from the whole having to help him walk to the bathroom, and telling him that at least two of his colleagues are more psychotic than even he probably was aware. 

She’s off Darren duty that day though, but just as she’s about to leave for a jog around the manor, she realizes she needed to give Jet something to pass along to her brother. Which is what she’s doing in that instant, as she’s digging through her dresser. The last time she was at Darren’s, he was asking her about some old hoodie of his that he’d been looking for for years, it was oversized and just the right kind of comfy- and she had mostly definitely stolen it from in at one point, and circumstances allowed her to keep it as her own for the time being. 

She lets out a triumphant laugh the moment her hand lands on the soft expanse of fabric, and it’s just as she does when she hears the knock on her doorframe followed by Zenith’s familiar voice. She’s still getting used to MOI’s face being paired with Zenith’s voice, but it’s not quite as jarring as an experience as it used to be, as she turns around to see her. And she’s stuck for a moment on just how to greet her, and is glad that Zenith keeps talking to spare her from having to figure out just what kind of approach she should take with her, now that she wasn’t fuming angry with her any longer. 

“I’m guessing you also heard Hyde’s role to play,” she rolls her eyes as she drapes Darren’s hoodie over her arm. “I haven’t said anything to him yet, figured I’d let him spend the first week wondering when I’ll show up, before I give him the worst shiner he’s had in his life.” He really was lucky she still held a certain fondness for him, after everything was said and done- if someone like Grizzly or Mimic had done the same, they’d be down a lung as well. 

“But um, I’m doing fine, I don’t need anything,” she shrugs, although it hits her then that Zenith is the first one to ask her how she’s doing, which fuck... it’s not like she got injured. When she and Lazarus showed up with Flame Thrower, looking like they just came back from Carrie’s prom, it’d certainly caused a scene, but that had been the extent in any interest in just what she’d been up to that night. 

“How about you?” She finds herself asking, wondering if anyone other than herself had checked in on Zenith either. “You doing okay?” 

[nightxhunter]

jetxstreamx​:

He can feel her eyes on him, watching as he surveys the room, as he examines Darren’s face. It makes him feel a little bit vulnerable somehow, like he’s doing something wrong, like he shouldn’t be here. But they’ve had enough of a heart to heart by now to convince Arya that he should stop doubting himself so intensely. Darren likes him. Darren wants him to be happy –– Darren wants him, which means that this is exactly where he’s supposed to be, exactly what he’s supposed to be doing. 

So he relaxes his shoulders instead, and manages to plaster on a teasing smile at her words. At least she isn’t being weird about it, questioning him about his presence here. He’d hate to make a bad impression by having to put up a fight if she wanted him to get the hell out and leave her alone.

“Yeah, yeah. I know all my tricks. Sit, stay, bark.” Arya winks in her direction, before he shifts, fixing the blanket so it lay more carefully over Darren’s chest. He’s so achingly careful, not to disturb him, not to touch any of the parts of him that might be aching. 

The hospital chair is distinctly uncomfortable. He hates places like this, he always has. The clean hospital feeling always makes him feel like he’s back in his childhood. With exams, and tests, and a clinical upbringing devoid of warmth. He wants to bring Darren home, somewhere softer, somewhere he can wrap Darren up in careful warmth. Soft pillows, soft blankets, delicate kisses layed across his forehead. And the thought makes him blush, because she’s asking the question even as he realised what he implied before. 

He can’t tell if it would be a lie to say yes. But it doesn’t feel like it would be. He hasn’t slept anywhere else in months. Darren asked him to stay, told him he could stay for as long as he wanted. He shrugs his shoulders, nods his head a little bit. “More or less.” He says. “More more than less, though.” And then he winces, and remembers why he always gets so nervous around new people, wonders why he can’t just shut up like he normally does. His anxious quiet wouldn’t actually help, but maybe he wouldn’t embarrass himself anymore either. 

He furrows his brow in worry, when she stumbles over her words. His mind is running through worst case scenarios, wondering how bad this could be. And he takes the pamplet when she hands it to him, the scary big words and the scary pictures. He bites his lip, and glances back at Darren, so small and weak in the hospital bed. “Fuck, yeah. No. He’ll be good. He’ll be fine. I’ll kick his ass if he isn’t.”

And he’s nodding his head in agreement, because of course. Of course he would be there. Of course he would help. “I’ll be there. Whenever he needs.” And he tries to offer her a smile. “I’ve got a quick commute, anyway. And if you ever need a portal somewhere, there or away or… whatever.” 

All of this suddenly felt a little less overwhelming, now that she realized she at least had one other person on her side when it came to all of this. Darren getting out of this healthy and safe would have been a lot weighing on her as is, but having to both heal the wounds her “death” caused, as well as help him as his physical ones healed, had seemed daunting. 

“I’ll cut back on the missions I’m taking up,” she responds, as she jumps to figuring out some kind of a plan for the two of them, since that sounded easier. “Since you’re living there, I can pick up on some days, and give you a couple evenings every week.” 

Glancing back down to Darren, something soft and aching blooms in her chest as she watches his eyes dance beneath his lids. She wonders briefly, if he could sense her presence there or not. Once upon a time, the neural link between the two of them was strong. Once Darren had gotten his powers, a good deal of their conversations had happened privately within the safe corners of each other’s minds, rather than out in the open. You better get through this, asshole, she thinks, just in case he could hear her. 

“He’s going to have a decision to make- when he’s over this hump,” she says eyes still looking down at Darren, but talking to the villain her own mind has supplied her with the name of Jetstream. “When I had joined the Guardians, I did it for him. I thought he’d join with me, and it’d finally be a chance to get him away from our dad. But he didn’t, and in the end I was glad he didn’t when I realized what it was really like.” 

She lets out a small sigh before she looks back over to Jetstream, curious what he made of it all. “Part of me thinks he’ll leave, once he hears the truth. But I also see him trying to stay and fix the place. He could never pass up the chance to try to fix something himself, when given the opportunity.” 

[nightxhunter]

jetxstreamx​:

He feels almost like he’s done something wrong, for a moment. But he talks himself out of that spiral almost as soon as it starts, because as far as he’s concerned, he has a right to be there. He has a right to come and see Darren, after everything that they’ve been through, over the last few weeks. All the pressure, all the hard earned trust. Of course, he doesn’t want to intrude. But Darren is asleep right now, working through whatever they had done to ensure that he would someday be back in fighting shape again. There were no deep heart to hearts happening in this room. No reuinions that he was getting in the way of. At least, not yet.

So he nods his head, in a quick kind of agreement, and lets himself step a little further into the room. “Yeah, I can sneak you guys in contraband.” He looks at her, his eyes gentle. “From that one place by the museum, right?” 

He moves further into the room, shrugs off his jacket and slings it over the back of a chair, before he takes a good look at Darren. Heart beating fast, looking at his face, how small he looks in the hospital bed. Delicate. Not quite as strong and unstoppable as Arya always thought he looked, during the weeks that they had been building their relationship. He reaches out, runs a delicate finger over his forehead, tucks a stray strand of hair back off of his face. He feels tender, and aching with it. He wants to wrap Darren in bubble wrap and make sure no one ever hurts him again. 

He looks down at his face, but still takes the time to muse. “Leave it to me to completely miss Artemis coming back from the dead because I was too busy moving in with her brother.” It’s half a joke, and half a genuine dig at himself. He looks at her, then, tearing his eyes away from Darren. He pulls away, and slips into the seat across the bed from her, voice whisper quiet. He can’t believe she’s sitting there. And there’s this massive part of him that is so happy. Happy for Darren, whose about to get his sister back, pretty soon her. 

He knows, distantly, that this is what Darren has been longing for. His family. He’d stepped into her shoes, been a hero in her stead, and all the time he’s just wanted her back, more than anything else. Jet can’t imagine what that really feels like, but he knows its something big. He knows its so important. 

“Are you okay?” He asks, because he feels like he should. Because she looks like she’s been through the ringer here, as well. And then, a follow up. The most important question on his mind right now. “Is he gonna be okay?”

She can’t help but size up this latest fling of Darren’s, as he walks into the room, trying to gather what she can about the two’s relationship by how he interacts with her brother. If felt strange being so in the dark about Darren’s personal life, when before she was always among the first to learn everything that happened to him. This new one still seems in his puppy love stage, she thinks, as she watches him. She smiles anyway, when he mentions the French bakery by the museum that had been a favorite of the Lilly siblings, given how much it reminded them of their childhood. 

“Look at you, he’s trained you well,” she hums with a small grin, can’t help but already teasing him despite the fact they’d just met seconds before. “You should double his usual order, he’ll be wanting to wolf down what he can once he’s awake.” 

She falls silent as the villain- whose name she honestly didn’t know, nears Darren. Darren must have managed so far not to piss him off yet, with how soft he seems for him, slipping a strand of his hair behind his ear like he’s something precious. Darren was always precious to her, that was for certain, but it wasn’t often she met someone who saw him in the same light. 

“You’re living together?” Are the first words out of her mouth the moment he brings up the subject. She figured this guy was another one of his fleeting flings, but apparently she was wrong if Darren seemed to like him enough to not only give him a key, but let him move in. It’d be the first time Darren did that, as far as she knows, unless he’d made a habit of letting guys live with him since she “died”. 

She has to put aside the numerous burning questions she has for him though, the moment he asks his own. Because there was a pretty big piece of news, she supposed he needed to know too, although it wasn’t as pleasant as hearing her heartbreaker of a brother may have finally settled down some. 

“I’m alright- he...” she trails off, wishing the nurse was back so that she could be the barer of bad news again instead of Hunter. Picking up one of the pamphlets the nurse had given to her earlier, she leans over Darren’s still sleeping form to give it to the other villain. The words “Pneumonectomy Aftercare” were printed in bold across its front, over top an xray of a chest showing an empty space where a lung used to be. 

“The nurse said he’s healthy and young enough that he should bounce back fairly well after the recovery phase. If you really are living with him, the two of us should figure out some kind of schedule, so that he’s not alone in the apartment at any point for the first week he’s back.” 

[nightxhunter]

jetxstreamx​:

( the hospital, very late night after the tower attack, @nightxhunter​ ) 

It feels like it’s been days instead of just one night. It feels like it’s been eons. There had been so much to do, and Jet has to admit that he got a little wrapped up in making sure everyone was okay, that they were all settled. There seemed to be so much to do: taking care of Jase, for a bit, taking Catalyst home and getting her into bed before she passed out from exhaustion. She had been so brave, so strong, and she had carried this entire mission on her back. He was achingly proud of her, and he was glad that she got to go and rest.

He hasn’t rested yet at all. But he’s still feeling the affect of all that addrenaline. He’s not sure he would be able to fall asleep even if he tried. And he definitely wouldn’t be able to sleep after someone told him what happened with Darren, the way he had been hurt, the way he had needed more care than Nightingale could give him. 

It takes a little bit, to find out where Darren is, where he was taken so that someone could deal with his wounds. And then it took a little bit of effort to get himself there, and up to the room where he had been finally settled. His heart is aching, at the idea of Darren being hurt. Hurt badly enough for a hospital to be required, real medical intervention. So he definitely won’t be able to rest until he sees Darren in the flesh, can hold his hand and make sure that he isn’t going to die. 

But when he gets up to the room, he isn’t the only one there. 

There’s a woman. And he recognises her, distantly. 

“Oh,” He finally manages, seeing the woman there, sitting next to the sleeping Darren. “Um,” And he’s turning to go, because he feels like this probably isn’t his place. Because this is… Artemis, he thinks, brow furrowed in confusion. His sister. Dylan, he remembers, from the way that Darren used to talk about her. 

“Sorry,” He says, a whisper. “I didn’t mean to intrude. I’ll come back later.” 

The moment Darren was brought into the meet-up point, covered in his own blood and white as a sheet, she instantly found herself running to his side. The years worth of dread and anticipation over their eventual reunion, subsiding completely the moment she saw the state he was in. That reunion would ultimately be a very short-lived one, however, and one that involved Darren definitely thinking she was some blood-drenched phantom of his fever fueled nightmare, and not the living breathing version of his sister she actually was. 

Once Darren is taken away to the closest hospital, she only spares herself enough time to shower off the remains of Ramses’s crimson deluge, and change into something far more comfortable before she’s back at the hospital again. The first couple hours she’s there, she spends it holed up in a waiting room while Darren was undergoing surgery to remove the bullets that were still lodged in his chest. It was an hour into said surgery when the nurse arrived, giving her the news that Darren’s odds of survival were high, but he’d be down a lung in the process. 

Once Darren was out of surgery, she quickly moves into his room, where he was still passed out from the meds he was on, and likely would remain asleep until the next morning giving the nightmare of a night he’d just had. As much as she’d like to hunt down Hyde and give him one hell of a shiner, which she knows he’ll let her give him, all things considered, she opts to stay in the hospital instead, not wanting to leave Darren’s side after so long apart. 

The clock on the wall in front of her is nearing two in the morning, and despite the night she herself has had, she’s found herself thumbing through the small pile of literature the nurse had handed to her once she’d given her Darren’s prognosis. She’s only about halfway through her first one though, when suddenly she hears the door click open and- well she’s not actually sure who the fuck it is that comes in. 

She stares at the intruder for a moment, completely perplexed until realizing he was one of the villains Catalyst had conscripted into that night’s fight. But that was honestly all she knew about him. That didn’t give her fuck all enough information though, when it came to understanding why in the hell he was there- and why he seemed nervous as a chihuahua. 

She looks between him and Darren for a moment, waiting for him to tell her why he’s there- until it hits her. Because really... it only takes one look at the “suit” he was wearing to tell her precisely how Darren knew this guy. 

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” she huffs a quiet laugh as she slumps back into her chair. 

It’s the second damn time Darren has managed to do this to her without even trying, at least this time though it seems the villain that’s standing before her isn’t an ex of his, but likely his current fling. 

“You can stay,” she lifts her hands in surrender, keeping her voice as quiet as she can so as not to disturb Darren, “but when he wakes up, I’m getting first dibs. You can run out and get us breakfast or whatever.” 

[nightxhunter]

lazarusdoe​:

They don’t really think they could be more grateful for Hunter in this moment, the way she comes over immediately, offers her help getting out of here without them having to ask for it again, and they put their arm around her shoulders, wincing a little with the pain of their own shoulder as they do it, letting some of their weight settle against her. It’s impossible to shake off the feeling of the memory, though, which is why it feels all the more important that they’ve got someone they can trust next to them right now, because they don’t feel like they’re in any state just now, mentally or physically, to take on another round of overpowered zombies.

Even if they’re distracted as hell, they can tell that Hunter noticed the little blip in things, too, which makes sense considering they explained things to her when they sat down to ask her about the memory, since she’s the only person before now who they had gotten hit with a memory of when they took or gave life force from or to. They look at her, considering that, wondering why it happened here, too, but just differently enough that they’re not sure it’s the same thing. This time, it feels like something that Mind Master might’ve managed to unlock by taking them through their memories, like maybe their powers should’ve been able to do this the whole time, almost like it’s healing their mind when they fuck with someone’s life force, too, but they don’t intend on talking about that with Clint strutting around now like he owns the place, despite being covered in blood still. 

It seems like Hunter silently agrees with that thought, too, not asking about the moment, even though they can tell she’s wondering about what it must have been. They’re not really ready to dive into what the fuck it might mean that they not only knew Clint before their death, but might’ve been fucking him then, too, and he conveniently decided to leave that out of his little join the Guardians speech a few years back, so that he could keep the fucked up power over them he clearly liked to have over everyone. 

But that’s not something to put into words right now. For now, they’re glad that she takes the lead, telling him to go first, to let him lead them out and play the hero like he loves to do. They roll their eyes, too, but feel a sense of relief when he starts ahead of them, not really having any desire to even look at the asshole after this sudden revelation. Hunter’s tap on their side signals she’s ready to go, though, so they carefully start to follow her lead, keeping the weight off the leg that took the brunt of Clint’s injury.

“Yeah, I fuckin’ wish. That’s the least we deserve for him nearly getting us all killed,” Lazarus mutters with a breath of a laugh, content to hold onto that image for now, over considering things too deeply when they still have to make it out of the tower, and do a shit ton of healing first. They only hope someone else managed to bag at least one zombie, so they can take enough life force back to heal completely, and wash away the skin-crawling feeling of giving to the asshole leading them to the elevator, while they’re at it. 

[nightxhunter]

lazarusdoe​:

They really aren’t in the mood for Flame Thrower’s bullshit right now. The pain they’re in isn’t nice, even if they know that they’ll be able to make it out just fine until they can either, hopefully, get someone else to heal them, or take a little bit of life force from several people to start slowly healing themself of the wounds that Mordred managed to inflict. What they kind of want to do is just leave him here, in honesty, and they have a strong feeling that Hunter would do the same thing, too, considering her history with him. But that’s not what they came here to do, and they know him well enough to know that if they leave him here, he’s gonna find a way to act like he was the hero among the, having been willing to sacrifice himself to make sure they got out or some shit, instead of being an absolute idiot and interfering where he wasn’t needed, and almost leaving Hunter to die again because of it.

So they appreciate that she shuts him out of the conversation, comes over to them to get their feelings on the matter and make sure they’re well enough to get out of here rather than even humor the crap he’s talking. As soon as she suggests it, though, they already know that that’s not something they’re gonna be able to get away with, even if they’d much rather drag his ass out of here than do what they know they’ll have to. And of fucking course he brings it up right away, and they hate that they know he’s right, that even if they do hope the rest of the teams have managed their jobs and the way is clear, there’s a good chance others have run into as much trouble as they have, and because of it they might run into more undead before they can get out. 

Lazarus sighs deeply, as he scoffs, calls them Doe again, which makes their blood fucking boil, especially with how needlessly complicated he made this fight, knowing they’re gonna have to help him anyway. It’s a small satisfaction that Hunter shoots back at him the truth of the matter, so at least it’s clear as day where they stand.

“Fuck, fuck, okay, fine, but I’m only giving enough that you can manage to walk out of here on your own, not a fuckin’ drop more,” they scoff, carefully starting to get up from the blood-covered floor, careful not to put any weight on the arm of shoulder injury, no need to make it worse when they’re about to make it worse in an entirely different way. They look at Hunter with a nod. “I might need a hand getting out of here after I do the healing. I promise you won’t have to carry me, though.”

“At least someone’s smart around here,” he scoffs, looking up at them as they come over to him. It turns into a smirk, though, as they kneel down next to him. “Where do you want to touch, Doe?”

“Shut up, and let me get this over with,” Lazarus mutters, grabbing his wrist and jerking it towards them roughly, tempted to pull his fucking arm out of the socket since he doesn’t need that to walk out of here. As soon as skin touches skin, they go ahead and start giving, and this is a feeling they’ve always hated. It makes their skin crawl, feeling the way new cracks form in the places where Mordred injured Flame Thrower. But they only feel that for a few seconds before they’re hit with a sudden, unfamiliar memory.

A coffee shop, they’re looking in, but this time they recognize the back of their head, dark, short hair. What’s jarring is that they recognize someone else, too, they recognize the man putting his hand on their arm, leading them towards the door, even as they glance back at something, or someone they can’t see. It’s him. It’s fuckin’ Flame Thrower, except it’s not Flame Thrower, it’s Clint, they’re out normally, not on a mission, clearly not fighting. It’s over in a split second, though, as they can feel the burning in their own thigh where Mordred’s sword caught him the worst, bringing them back to reality, telling them they’ve given enough that he can walk out of here and so can they.

“What the fuck,” they mutter despite themself, completely stunned, because there’s no mistaking what that memory was, no mistaking that they were there with Clint. They knew him before, and by the looks of it, they were pretty fucking close. The shock keeps them in their place, staring at him in silence, not knowing what to do with this information, what the fuck it means, if he knows, or didn’t recognize them. Something tells them that he does, though, because he’s just manipulative enough he probably would’ve enjoyed having that upper hand on them. They practically shove him away in their attempt to get up quickly, nearly slipping in the blood, as they tear their eyes from him. “Fuck you, Clint. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

. 

She hates that to a certain extent Clint was right, but she wasn’t going to voice that. It was Lazarus who would have to pay the price to help heal Clint, and so it was only Lazarus who could make the decision to do so in the first place. As they move to get up from the slippery floor, she hovers her hands in front of them, making sure she was close enough if she needed to catch them before they slipped. When they mention likely needing her help after this, she nods her head without question. She’d pick helping Lazarus over Clint any day of the week, she may be much shorter in stature than both of them, but her enhanced strength made her able to do what was needed without too much exertion on her end. 

Her stomach goes queasy as Clint looks up at Lazarus as they drawl closer to him, that predatory smirk of his fully unveiled with little effort to hide it on his end. There was a history between the two of them, she thinks as she watches Lazarus yank his wrist towards them. It was a history that left Clint feeling in the position to openly ogle at Lazarus, and one that left Lazarus looking more uncomfortable than she was about this whole mess. 

Once the connection is made between Lazarus and Clint, she spots something familiar hit Lazarus’s features. It was the same distant look they had when they touched her, when they saw that memory of her and Darren. But Lazarus said she was the only person they’d ever gotten a memory from- and yet here they seemed to be getting another one, and from Clint of all people.

Her brows knit as she continues to watch the exchange, and the stunned look that settles in Lazarus’s features once they let go of Clint. Whatever memory they saw had to have been a disturbing one- and likely one linked to Clint given how she was in the memory they saw with her. Did Clint know Lazarus before they were resurrected? She could easily see Clint taking advantage of such a situation, and the power imbalance that would no doubt provide. But Lazarus wasn’t in the memory they saw when they touched her- so it could very well be the case Lazarus saw something troubling of Clint’s own past. 

She has to shake away the cascade of questions though, once Clint stands, and in return Lazarus’s own posture grows unsteady. Walking over to Lazarus, she slips herself into the curve of their side, providing her weight as support should they need it. But the action feels familiar for some strange reason, as she settles against their frame, like she’d done this before, although that time their weight was a much heavier burden.... 

She shakes away the thoughts as her eyes land back on Clint, and nods for him to take the lead. “You go first, ‘hero’, I’m sure there’ll be news cameras outside the Tower that’d love to see you leading us two out of here.”

Clint smirks at the idea, clearly liking the image she was painting. “Just consider me your knight in shining armor,” he hums, before leading them out the and towards the elevator.

All she can do is roll her eyes before tapping Lazarus’s side, letting them know she was ready to step forward if they were. 

“Maybe we’ll get lucky, and the elevator will drop just as he steps into it,” she mumbles to them with the slightest hint of a smile, enjoying the thought. She would have to ask them about the memory they saw later, she tells herself, when Clint was much further out of earshot. 

[nightxhunter]

lazarusdoe​:

The whistle immediately gets their attention, and they feel like they’re seeing a damn angel covered in bandages when they look over and see Captain Covert  in the doorway, looking in on the mess. Despite the sword of light still lodged in their shoulder, Mordred’s attention also caught by the whistle, and the familiar bandage covered face, Lazarus lets out a sigh of relief, because they know he’ll be able to manage getting Ramses off of Hunter somehow, even if it means he’s planning cat and mouse with the zombie, maybe a little literally considering the actual cat apart of this fight. “Oh, thank God,” they mutter, stopping the struggle for a second to see exactly what it is he plans to do. 

Before he even does anything, though, Ramses is getting off of Hunter, and the fuckin’ cat is going to Cap, purring like wild, which is both bizarre and a little endearing, filling in the blanks with what they know about things from their conversation with him before this. And he doesn’t seem worried about getting hurt, being attacked, which seems justified, considering the way the cat nuzzles against his chest, and they watch Ramses fixated on him, giving Hunter room to get out of the way at last. Mordred has them pinned at just the right angle to be able to see Ramses’s profile, to see the way something is clearly changed in him, too, almost in the same way that for a split second during this fight––and maybe even right now, too, considering how still everything else is––Mordred seemed to remember themself. 

They watch silently, waiting with baited breath, as Ramses seems to answer his question silently, clear recognition on his face, before he licks his lips then…bares his teeth, sort of snarls? And the little laugh that they hear Cap let out is clearly a good sign for whatever the fuck that means, especially because the blood finally stops falling from the sprinklers, and Ramses starts towards Cap and the cat, attention wholly on him. They catch Hunters eye, and shake their head a little bewildered, would offer more if there still wasn’t a sword in their shoulder, but the details can wait for now. Their thoroughly kinky mind fills in the blanks, after all, with what it is Captain Covert is planning to distract his zombie partner with, and while it’s an image they’ll probably give some time to later tonight, for now there’s a little more to deal with before they can get the fuck out of here themselves. 

With the moment of distraction waning as Captain Covert leads them away, Lazarus braces themself for the pain of what they plan to do, and grabs the moonbeam sword with both hands, praying once again that it’ll actually feel solid enough to give them leverage, and luckily it does, even as it sears their palms. But they grit their teeth through it, and give Mordred a kick to the stomach, which they manage before their attention has fully returned luckily. They end up falling back, the sword flickering out of existence again, and Lazarus slides to the floor, prepared to book it the fuck out of there even through the pain, no time to waste. 

Instead of another attack coming, though, as they scramble to get back up, still difficult from all the fucking leftover blood, they watch as Mordred moves back down the hall from where they’d come from, and instead goes to Morrígan, who their shot had managed to hit somewhere, only just recovering.

“Next time, love,” they hear Morrígan say, as Mordred helps her back up. There’s another burst of bright white moonlight, a shield of some sort, but they think it’s pretty pointless considering the state they’re all in, as they retreat down the hall, finally leaving them alone again.

Lazarus lets out a deep sigh, ending in a grimace of pain as they lean back against the wall again. They try to wipe some of the blood off of their face with the back of their hand, but it only makes it worse, really, their hands just as covered of course. “Well, at least we’re not dead, huh?” they say, looking at Hunter, then over to Flame Thrower where he’s still a mess on the ground. “Cap’s ass really came in clutch there…They should’ve done their research with the zombies they picked.”

.

She lets out a ragged breath once the three of them are alone again, the corridor they were in still stained with the blood from Ramses’s deluge. All three of them look like absolute hell, but Clint was clearly in the worse shape, after Mordred’s blade of light cut him down. Carefully getting up off the floor, she uses the wall behind her as leverage as she tries not to slip on the soaked floor. 

“Gotta admit, I didn’t have getting saved by Captain Covert’s fuckability on my bingo card for tonight,” she huffs a weak laugh as she walks over to Lazarus, going to check to make sure they were okay before even addressing whatever in the hell they were going to do about Clint. If she had it her way they’d just leave him behind to crawl out of there himself, although she’s certain that would go against the whole “Save the Guardians” theme of the night. 

“Yeah, yeah, congrats on Cap finally being of use for once,” Clint groans from the ground, as he clutches the injuries Mordred inflicted on his legs, “I’ll make sure he gets the Excalibur Award for Hero of the Year, at the next fuckin’ ceremony. Now can we get the fuck out of here- or do we want to wait for the next wave to hit.” 

Hunter keeps her gaze on Lazarus instead of looking behind her towards Clint, because she knows that if she does she’s going to want to kick his damn teeth out. “We could carry him out of here,” she tells them quietly, as she moves to block Clint’s view of their conversation. She’s carried heavier loads before, so she knows she can do it- the thought of having to touch Clint made her skin crawl, but if the only way for them to get out of there was to do just that, then she knows she’ll just have to grit her teeth and bare it. 

“If the lower floor teams did their jobs and managed to clear the way out, we shouldn’t run into any more undead than we already have.” 

“You’re fucking kidding me, right?” Clint scoffs from behind her, clearly still being able to hear the conversation. “Doe can heal someone with a touch, and you think the best plan is to occupy all three of us by hauling me out of here?” 

“No, the best plan is to leave you here to fucking rot, like you did me, but unfortunately that’s out of the question,” she fires back as she finally turns to look at him. 

Even though his words pissed her the fuck off, she knows he was right to a certain extent. But that didn’t mean she loved the idea of asking Lazarus to help the asshole, especially when she knew the cost they’d have to pay in return. 

[nightxhunter]

lazarusdoe​:

cw: lots o’ lightsaber injuries plus still plagues 

Before they can react any further, a fucking fireball comes hurling through the rain of blood, and hits Mordred in the chest, making them stumble back, slipping in the blood, and literally any other time in the past five minutes they would’ve been glad Flame Thrower took their attention away from Lazarus, except for this one moment, where it felt like they were on the verge of learning something huge. They look over at him, and they know immediately it wasn’t a heroic move, even through their clouded vision, and Flame Thrower covered in blood himself, they can tell just looking at him, from the way he’s standing, even while injured, that there was something else there, too.

“You fuckin’ idiot, they were trying to tell me something, they were themself for a fuckin’ second there,” Lazarus shouts. And maybe it’s the adrenaline pumping, the expectation of a fight they haven’t gotten yet, combining horribly with how livid they are that he took away their chance to potentially learn something more, to try and get Mordred’s focus back to that, but they point their gun at him, tempted to just go ahead and fucking shoot, so he can’t fuck this up anymore than he already has.

“They’re a zombie, what the hell do you think the living dead could possibly be trying to tell the dead living,” he scoffs, shrugging like it’s no big deal at all.

They don’t manage a response, though, as they see Hunter go down, Ramses’s much larger frame pining her down easily, choking her with her own baton, the fuckin’ cat still on his shoulders, hissing down at her, and they realize they don’t even know where Morrígan is, if they managed to down her. But they don’t manage to get as far as figuring that out and making their move to help Hunter, because Mordred is back up faster than they thought they could be––probably thanks to no feeling in their chest where Flame Thrower burned them, being dead and everything––and is lifting their sword of light taking it out of Flame Thrower before Lazarus can. And they’re too slow to intervene fast enough, considering how the asshole wields a sword. They make one, two, three hits two in one leg, one in the other, before Lazarus manages to shoot them, only one shot hitting, although it doesn’t take them down just knocks them off balance, before they conjure up a shield of light with their free hand to block the next shot Lazarus takes. 

The noise of pain that Flame Thrower lets out makes it clear as day just how deep the slices go, as he falls to the blood-covered ground almost like a damn rag doll and Lazarus realizes that Mordred must’ve done it so that he couldn’t run, while they deal with them, keeping either from helping Hunter, as they turn their attention back to them, no look of recognition in their eyes this time. There’s no time to think then, as the onslaught of sword attacks start. They’re quick, but so is Lazarus, despite their general everything, and they manage to weave and dodge with a few well placed twirls trying their damndest not to slip in the blood, using their gun as a shield only works on the first swing of Modred’s moonbeam sword, as the light slices through the metal as if it were paper, before catching them in the other arm, causing them to drop their knife, too.

Cursing to themself, they grit their teeth to the pain, and think. It’s easy to see that there’s no point in trying to hurt them, that they’re probably not going to be able to manage to get past their attacks well enough to put skin to skin and take them down with a touch. They think their only options here are to do their best to get Ramses off of Hunter, and get the hell out of there with her, forget about dragging Flame Thrower’s ass out of there. “Just hold on, Hunter, I’m coming,” they shout, doing their best to push forward towards that fight.

Unfortunately, that makes Ramses look over, even as he’s choking Hunter. A brief look between the zombies gives Lazarus the opening to grab Mordred’s arm, trying to touch skin, while they all but pull themself through their bloodless bubble towards Hunter, except suddenly Mordred’s sword disappears, and then all at once its pitch black, a sort of vacuum for light, another fucking plague. They make the choice to sprint forward, though, thinking they know where Ramses was, hoping to tackle him off of Hunter, but two steps forward it suddenly feels like gravity is pulling them backward, then moonlight cuts through the darkness and Mordred runs their sword through their shoulder, forcing them all the way back against the wall, the burning pain of it unlike anything they can remember feeling before.

Letting out a cry of pain, they try desperately to reach Mordred, grabbing at them desperately, to no avail. And they really are panicking now, because they don’t know how the fuck they’re all going to make it out of this. Mordred, though, doesn’t seem intent on killing them, at least not yet. So they try a desperate plea, still not even sure where Morrígan is even as the darkness lifts. “Okay, Morrígan, you win, alright? I’ll join your necromancy party, if you let her go. Please, just let Hunter go.”

cw: choking 

Time seems to slow as she continues to try to fight Ramses off of her, while Lazarus continues their own fight with Mordred. Clint is down quick, once he steps into the fray, which serves him fucking right, she thinks briefly. He’d still be standing if he kept by her side, instead he had to insert himself into whatever the hell was going on with Lazarus and Mordred. 

As the baton digs further into her neck, and Lazarus’s attempt to aid her resulted in their own injury, she thinks that this might be it- that everything that’d happened in the last few years now was going to end here. And she’s pissed the fuck off about it, that her end would come now, at the hands of some zombie piece of shit, with Darren still not knowing she had been alive, and the world still thinking Clint was some god damn golden boy. Even if he died here with her, he’d still be painted the hero, while she would probably be labeled as some nameless Jane Doe he sacrificed his life trying to save. 

Her thoughts are soon cut off though, as a sharp whistle cuts through the dark room. At first she thinks its Morrigan, given Lazarus’s last words, but once the lights return she tilts her head to see Captain Covert hovering in a nearby doorway. She nearly shouts at him to turn around and run, because this fight was beyond anything Cap could handle. Soon though, none of that matters when she feels Ramses’s weight slowly lift off of her, and the cat that had been perched on his shoulders jumps down and towards Cap. 

“Bastet, come here, beautiful,” Cap coos, as the feline slinks over to him, still untouched by the shower of blood as it fell everywhere but on her. The cat nuzzles into his leg, and Hunter is certain she can hear the thing full on purr as Cap picks her up to cuddle her against his chest. Ramses fully lifts himself off of her as his attention fixates on the two, which she uses to quickly scoot away from him. 

“What an absolutely disgusting mess daddy has made, huh?” Cap continues as he stares down at the creature before his bandaged head looks over to Ramses. “Alright, she remembers me, you big lug, how about you?” Hunter can’t see Ramses’s features from her spot behind him, but Cap seems.... amused? Yes, amused, by whatever he sees. 

“Oh you definitely do, don’t you,” He chuckles as he sets the cat down, his gaze not leaving Ramses as he does. “There may not be anyone home upstairs, but those hormones of yours are telling you exactly who I am, aren’t they.” 

Hunter looks away from the increasingly bizarre interaction long enough to steal a glance at Lazarus, before mouthing ‘What the fuck?’

When she looks back to Cap, he’s already on his way out the door, with Ramses and the cat that’d been with him close behind him. And just like that, suddenly they were down a zombie, with only Captain Covert and apparently his death-defying sex appeal to thank for it. 

[nightxhunter]

lazarusdoe​:

Of course, Morrígan isn’t interested in their attempt at acting like this is a normal deal. The issue is that they don’t really know what they’re supposed to do here if not the normal, bullshit hero-villain schtick, even though they’re both villains. She seems off to them, though, and it makes them realize for the first time somehow that this can’t be entirely her. Sure, they know full well how easily pissed off she’s always been, how petty she can be, what an absolute bitch she is, but they never could’ve guessed it would lead to something like this. It’s gotta be Dr. Judgement influencing her, and probably the others, too, with his own shit, using their anger to make it all worse, so that he could get them all to play along with his horrifying plan easier, even as it great much, much bigger, and much, much more dangerous. 

Not that that makes it any easier to figure out what the right move is here, as they hold the gun and knife alike, attention focused on her.

“Yeah, I guess so. What, is it not working?” they ask, sarcastically, raising an eyebrow, still trying to go for something casual. They can hear Hunter and Flame Thrower whispering just behind them, though, and they’re hoping maybe if they can keep Morrígan talking long enough, they’ll be able to figure out a plan to give them all an opening to get out of here safely. If they get the change, they’ll smack the life force right out of Ramses for Captain Covert, but they’re not really convinced they’ll manage to get close enough to make that happen without being eaten by locusts or some shit. “It’s fucked up that you’re making me have to act like a hero. You know this shit isn’t my style, either.”

“I know, darling. And we both also know you’re not going to be able to close enough to any of my pawns to stop me,” she says, with mock pity, luckily content to focus on them for the moment at least. 

“I’ve gotten a little better at the whole selfless bullshit since you’ve been gone, to be honest. Maybe I’m more willing to risk bodily harm than I was before, especially when I’m just gonna take stolen life force back anyway,” Lazarus shrugs, twirling their knife around a little for show, stalling as best they can.

She sighs. “That’s all well and good, but delaying the inevitable isn’t going to make a difference, Lazarus. If you’d rather fight than come stand next to me, I’ll just have to bring you back once they’ve taken care of you.” And that’s just confirmation that this isn’t entirely her, because despite everything, they feel certain the Morrígan who trained them, mentored them, wouldn’t be threatening to kill them, when they’ve done nothing to personally wrong her. 

They don’t want to shoot at her, and there’s no way she’s letting them get close enough to her that they could threaten with their knife or their powers. Even if they disagree with everything she’s done surrounding this mess, she was their mentor, one of the first people in the manor who had really made them feel like they could fit here, could be powerful enough to earn that spot. And they know that she’s being influenced by Judgement, making reason kind of impossible when emotion is so intense. So they don’t really know what the hell they’re supposed to do here as the zombies move past them to Hunter and Flame Thrower, and she pulls out her own weapon, because they’re pretty convinced that she really will kill them herself and turn them into a zombie on her side, and they don’t really want zombie messiah to be any more literal than it already is. 

Holding their weapons up, trying to make it clear they don’t want to fight, they glance back at the actual fight happening behind them, the impressive effort Hunter and Flame Thrower are making working together, no time to really consider how fucked up in it’s own right that is, besides just how clear it is taking down zombies isn’t really easy. They watch a sudden cloud of fucking locusts being burned with a ball of flames as Hunter hits Ramses, only to reappear in the shower of blood still raining down, before a fucking moonbeam gets shot in Flame Thrower’s direction

“Morrígan, we don’t stand a fuckin’ chance against these two. It’s kind of unfair to put Mordred against another Courtney, isn’t it?” they say, trying to distract again, before making the choice to give in and shoot at her. Which they do before turning to head into the fray, not waiting to see if they hit their target, except when they turn, Mordred suddenly stops, attention snapping to them, and if their heart wasn’t already beating fast enough, it’d be trying to pump out of their damn chest now for how chilling it is, at first, the blankly bloodthirsty stare turned on them, they have to assume from Morrígan’s doing for shooting at her. 

Except then something changes, and Mordred is frowning slightly, before something like recognition seems to wash over their face and they nearly seem to be trying to smile at them. The zombie opens their mouth to say something, no sound coming out, but somehow Lazarus knows what they’re trying to say, and it feels like the other bits and pieces of inherent knowledge that have popped up, a strange feeling of certainty in their gut without any concrete evidence they’re right.

They recognize them somehow, except they’re telling them how. A name. And somehow, they know it’s related to the woman they saw in the memory with Mind Master, somehow they know that if they could figure out who she is, too, they would know who Mordred is trying to tell them about, that they could figure out who the fuck they are. 

Who the fuck Maeve is?

“What the fuck…” It throws them off badly enough that they just stand there for a long second, staring at the zombie, hoping they’ll try to tell them something else, or give them a last name at least or anything, even as they can see the change happening again, that split second of them slipping through the undead life Morrígan forced on them, the blank, bloodthirsty look returning, as they raise their sword.

cw: its boil time, baby. also some mentions of choking  

She’s not quite sure how much longer she’ll be able to fight both Mordred and Ramses in close quarters, even with Clint behind her firing off fireballs every few seconds to prevent either of them from getting too overrun. Her arms and back are absolutely aching as she continues, swinging mercilessly at both undead villains, giving them every ounce of strength she has in her, but still it wasn’t enough. 

Lazarus drawling Mordred’s attention away from her and Clint provides some rest, though not very much considering who she was still fighting against. The sprinkler system was still pouring blood down onto them as the fight continues, making every step she takes a uncertain one as her boots begin to slip in the blood soaked floor. It isn’t until she ducks down after another two beats, keeping to her and Clint’s pattern when she realizes he’d pulled away from her fight, and seemingly shifted his attention to Lazarus and Mordred. 

She doesn’t have time to figure out what pulled his attention away from her or why, as the missing fireball that should be getting hurled in Ramses’s direction doesn’t come, giving the undead villain the prefect window to give her a hard kick into the abdomen that briefly knocks the air from her, and sends her slipping backward as she struggles to regain her footing. 

It’s then when her fight takes its turns, shifting from keeping Ramses on the constant defensive, until suddenly she was the one finding herself having to beat back his attacks. Trying to regain her hold on the fight without Clint as a backup, she takes another two good swings in Ramses’s direction, only for him to grab her arm and yank her hard down towards the floor. 

Before she can register what’s happening, he’s on top of her, grabbing one of the batons she still held in her hand and forcing it on her windpipe. Dropping her other baton she uses both hands to try to push back the one that Ramses was trying to crush into her neck. 

For a moment the two of them seem to be evenly matched, as she manages to hold him back from pressing the baton against her neck any further. Suddenly though, her hands feel as though they’re on fire where Ramses’s lay on top of them. 

It isn’t until she hears a sickly pop in her hand, when she realizes the fucker was covering her hands with boils. She has to fight off the urge to gag for the second time during her fight with the villain, as she tries to fight through the painful boils continuing to swell and pop in her hands as she tries to push him off of her. 

[nightxhunter]

firebrcnd​:

He could easily make himself doubt that Puppeteer is being honest with them, but he finds that he has no reason to, doesn’t really want to. The exchange between her and the guard—Retro, apparently—lends some credence to the story she tells, but more than that, he just finds that in his bones he believes her. And Hunter seems to, as well, seems to be on the same page as him as they exchange a brief look a moment before the cocktail waitress hands him a glass of water that turns into a gin and tonic the moment his fingertips touch the glass. 

The few superhumans he’s seen, since they got here, don’t seem unhappy. And while it could have all been a show, he doesn’t think it is. And he may not be the one here who has any history with Tweed, but he has to admit that there’s nevertheless something vindicating to the idea of all of his rabbits rising up against him and turning him into— well, into a literal puppet for their own operation.

He takes a sip of his gin and tonic, sitting back on the couch as she finishes up answering Hunter’s questions, and finds himself wondering what Fortune would make of this. A stray instinct, somewhere in the back of his mind, some part of him that’s forgotten everything that has happened the past few weeks, pictures going home and telling him what had happened to Tweed, what had become of this place.

Maybe he still will. It seems like something Fortune ought to know, regardless of what’s happened between them.

     “Well,” he says, giving Hunter a quick nod before looking back to Puppeteer. “I’m sure White will be extremely happy to hear that you’re doing so well for yourself. There’s clearly no danger to you, here, and she’ll certainly agree that, given your integral role in keeping this a safe place for superhumans to find honest work, you can’t possibly be pulled away for a trip back to the Manor.” 

He imagines White won’t agree with that, given the fact that all three of them in the room are aware that the reason White’s been calling upon current and former Collective villains has nothing at all to do with their personal well-being and everything to do with Judgement’s forthcoming plans. But if four years at Cambridge taught him anything, it’s how to get away with all manner of shit by following the exact letter of the law: what White won’t say out loud, they’re well within their right to feign ignorance of. 

Puppeteer’s gaze narrows in Firebrand’s direction as he speaks, seemingly trying to figure out if he genuinely believed what he was saying or not. She eventually seems to catch on to what Firebrand was doing, which Hunter is grateful for. However they were going to approach White with this, it’d be best if they were all operating with the same plan in mind. She doubts White would be satisfied with the answer Firebrand and her give their second-in-command, but Hunter can’t help but think White has to have bigger fish to fry than Puppeteer at the moment. 

“I don’t want White eventually trying to get her hands on this place,” Puppeteer replies, clearly still weighing her options as she takes a sip of her drink. “That’s what she’ll eventually do, you know. She’ll see the opportunity this place could provide, and try to get all of us on the Collective’s payroll.” 

“We can cross that bridge when or if we ever cross it,” Hunter speaks up, still thinking about White’s stolen attention. “All White wanted us to do here, was find you and bring you to her. But if we play none the wiser and let her know you’re all good here, I don’t see her having the time at the moment to waste any more resources on bringing you back into the fold than she already has.” 

Puppeteer looks like she’s about ready to argue with her, but she seems to back down, as her shoulders sag and she lets out a long sigh in agreement. “Fine, but if I get so much as a suspicion that she’s sticking her nose back in this place, you two better be ready to help me fight her off of it.” 

Looking to Firebrand, Hunter shrugs her shoulders, seeing no harm in extending their offer of aid further into the unforeseen future should Puppeteer ever need it. The Collective was supposed to help their own, and that would be exactly what they’d be doing if they aided Puppeteer and the others later down the road should they need it. 

“You got a deal,” she replies, giving Puppeteer a nod in assurance. 

Seeming to be content with the matter at hand, Puppeteer returns her smile with one of her own before leaning forward and extending her glass out for them to clink against it, her sleeve pulling up as she does, revealing her tattoo. 

“Well then, I guess all that’s left to say is welcome to Wonderland, assholes.” 

.

[nightxhunter]

zenith-moi​:

Zenith is surprised by how much they’re actually talking. She had really expected Night Hunter to shut her out again when the information Zenith had was handed over to her. An update on her brother, on the conflict that was sure to arise in the coming weeks and days. Zenith had just wanted her to be prepared, to know what was coming and what she might have to face at a moments notice, if she was asked to come along. She had thought that Hunter might need the chance to think it over, to bow out gracefully if she needed to. Zenith had meant it before, after all, when she said that no one would blame her if she stayed very very far away from the Guardian Tower. And if anybody did blame Hunter, Zenith wouldn’t hesitate to set them straight. 

“You’d be well within your rights.” She somehow settles on, when the idea of Night Hunter putting her in danger comes back up. And then she shakes her head, “I guess, when you first showed up, I wasn’t sure. I was just scared. I didn’t know what to think.” And that says a lot, because Zenith didn’t get scared. That was one of her rules. She was brave to a fault, so courageous that it put her in danger more often than not. 

And her heart aches a little bit, when Night Hunter admits that she’s never really felt at home anywhere. She can understand how hard it would have been to make a home in the Tower, when you were someone like Night Hunter. And even the connections she did have had hurt her so badly, made it a place she needed to run away from. 

“I wanted…” She looks at Night Hunter, and then away. She feels too soft about it, too vulnerable. “I wanted someone else to know me, really. I guess. And you never could have, any other way. It was like… we were getting so close, but we’ve never had a conversation before now without that wall between us, that secret. You could never know me, I could never know you.” She thinks for a second, massages the palm of her hand with her thumb. “It gets lonely, sometimes. Being me. I figured if I was lonely, you must be in hell.” And then she’s shaking her head again, looking up at Hunter. 

“It’s stupid, though. It doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t make it better, I mean. The lying I did. But I’m trying to do less of it.” Zenith sighs out a breath, and shrugs a shoulder. Sne changes course, then, because she feels like she should offer it. “If you want to –– need to, talk about any of the Guardian bullshit, or Darren, I’ll listen. Otherwise, I can leave you alone, like you asked.” 

She wasn’t expecting how easily the two of them would fall into this- talking, about shit deeper than just the banter that had previously made up so much of their past connection. Ordinarily she found it extremely difficult to open up to others, especially so quickly. Jase had been an exception, but Jase and her now shared a bond that automatically granted them a certain privilege to one another, and the thoughts and fears that still clung on to them so tightly. 

But Zenith was removed from all of that, at least to a certain extent. That doesn’t stop, though, the desperate need she feels in her to open herself up to Zenith, and pull her in deeper into her life and closer to her. She’d been so mad at her during their last interaction, when Zenith first revealed the secret she’d been keeping from her, now though... now all she really finds herself wanting to do is to repair that bridge between them. 

When Zenith looks up to her in that moment, and speaks of the loneliness that dwelled within her, she feels seen suddenly. She’d been alone for years, and had been absolutely drowning in it. That’s why she clung to Zenith has quickly as she did, once they found each other again, and didn’t hesitate trying to push the boundary of their connection further, despite still knowing so little of her. 

“Is that what you want? ...To know me?” She asks, placing an emphasis on the last word, because she needs to where Zenith stood here. It was hard to tell just how much of what was happening now was because of her specifically, or because Zenith simply wanted to quit being alone and she was the best candidate to fill that void. 

 She shakes her head when Zenith continues, calling her previous thoughts and actions stupid. She didn’t think they were, even though the secret hurt far worse than she’d expected it to. But she didn’t think any of it was stupid. 

“I don’t want that anymore...” she says after a moment, her gaze darting back up to Zenith’s. The distance between them seemed impossibly far still, but this time, instead of remaining frozen in place, she takes a step closer, letting Zenith know that she could too. “I don’t want you to leave me alone.”

[nightxhunter]

lazarusdoe​:

All in all, they’re not completely opposed to letting Hunter just kill the bastard. She deserves some real revenge, after all, and even if they’ve banged plenty of times over the years, that doesn’t mean Lazarus actually likes him. Hell, as far as they can tell, the world would probably be a better place if he wasn’t around anymore, or at the very least wasn’t a Guardian tricking the world into thinking he’s some golden boy, instead of a psychopath. So they don’t really plan to stop her if something does happen when they find him. And heading down the hallway, into the holding cells, they can’t help but think how messed up this place is, anyway. It makes them think of Daydreamer, makes them realize that this is probably the place that Mind Master did his dirty work on his powers, broke that trust. There’s not time to dwell on that, though, because as they pass a few more holding cells, a figure comes into view. Flame Thrower, clearly hurt, heading their way. 

They just roll their eyes, but give him a vague little wave, more than ready to tell him not to be an asshole right now, if need be, but Hunter gets to it before they can. They only have a chance to glance at her, about to ask her what she thinks their plan should be, when the sprinkler system kicks on, and they let out a vaguely annoyed sigh, not really thrilled about the inconvenience Flame Thrower’s clearly caused them, equally not as thrilled to hear there are Guardian zombies running around this floor, too, only ready to make it all the harder to deal with. 

Looking over at Hunter, Lazarus weighs the options. It’s tempting to just let him stay here while they investigate deeper, it’s also tempting to just leave now that they’ve found him, but they know they can’t do that, at least, they feel like they need to find at least one of the undead Morrígan raised, bring at least one of them back and give them that rest, like they promised Medusa and Captain Covert. 

Before they can say as much, though, something seems to change. “What the–?” they frown, blinking rapidly, vision suddenly obscured not just by water, but something thicker. The smell of burning is still so intense despite the sprinkler system going off that it takes a second for them to realize, for the coppery scent to hit their nose, for them to look up and see that the sprinklers aren’t spraying water anymore, but blood. And they’re not really someone to panic, but they feel pretty damn close to it, because this is kind of a worse case scenario as far as they can tell, standing here in this hallway with two firstborns now, a gun full of stun ammo, and powers they have to touch people to use. 

“Fuck. Fuck. I jinxed us, I shouldn’t have said that prayer…Hey, have you seen Captain Covert lately by chance?” they ask Flame Thrower, although they know the hope is slim, given it seems that the Guardians must’ve split up between floors. 

“Why the hell do you want him right now? Invisibility isn’t going to help you get out of here alive, Doe,” he scoffs, clearly confused by the question.

They’re about to tell him to shut the fuck up, to go ahead and do what they’d told Hunter they would and knock his ass out for pulling out the Doe here and now, but don’t get the chance.

“Lazarus, I’d heard I should expect to see you around to undo my work. You’ve come so far, haven’t you?” 

Turning around at the sound of the familiar voice, knife and gun alike held up at the ready, the image they’re faced with is both impressive, terrifying, and pretty fucked up. Morrígan walking towards them, flanked by two unfamiliar faces, but both of who they recognize immediately, all things considered. The sword of bright, white light and the contrasting black gear that gives theirs a run for their money gives the zombie on the left away as Mordred, who they’re almost equally as unenthused to see as the one on her right, clearly Ramses, not just from the blood, or the ridiculous amount of golden jewelry he’s wearing, but also because of the spotted zombie cat sitting on his shoulders, hissing wildly in their direction. The stranger part––if anything is stranger than an undead cat perched on an undead villains shoulders––though, is how the shower of blood seems to be unable to touch them, and they have no idea which of them is making that happen, if it’s the moon’s gravitational pull shit, or some parting of the Red Sea thing no one told them Ramses could do, but the gesture of power is fucking clear as the blinding light from Mordred’s sword. 

“I’d say good to see you, but I’m trying to lie less lately…You’ve pissed a hell of a lot of people off with this zombie shit, you know. Guess I gotta show them necromancy isn’t all bad,” Lazarus says casually as possible even though their heart is racing, trying to act as if this is normal, the usual sort of banter you’d get in a fight anyway, that they’re not expecting her to have Ramses make Hunter and Flame Thrower, at the least, drop dead if they say the wrong thing. 

It’s hard not to notice the bizarre tension lingering in the air between Lazarus and Clint as they look at one another. Clint is looking at Lazarus like they’re another one of his pets, something to consume and use however he liked. Lazarus, on the other hand, looks almost as pissed as she was at the realization that Clint was the “hero” they were there to save. There are numerous questions that flood her mind at the sight of the exchange, but all of those questions are quickly put to the side the moment she realizes that something has happened to the sprinkler system. Within seconds, the shower of water that’d been raining down on them turns crimson, and viscous in nature. She has to stop herself from gagging at the realization that the water had turned to blood- and was quickly coating her and everything around her. 

It isn’t much longer before the source of the stomach churning deluge is revealed, as Morrigan approaches them, flanked on either side by probably two of the most powerful undead villains that’d been stolen from the manor’s cemetery. Mordred and Ramses- she was far from well read in terms of superhuman history, but she knew enough of it to know precisely who they were. The water turned to blood was clearly one of Ramses’s tricks, but she knew Mordred would be no easier of an enemy either. 

“What is this, are you trying to banter with me?” Morrigan chuckles as she focuses her attention on Lazarus, “love, this isn’t some Saturday morning cartoon. If you’re going to try to stop me, you’re going to have to do much better than that.” 

“You take King Tut, and I’ll take Judas over there,” Clint mutters to her, as Ramses and Morrigan continue their back and forth, and it takes every bit of strength in her not to just turn around and kill him then and there, now that no one was paying attention to them. 

“Fuck off,” she whispers back to him through gritted teeth. “If you think we’re a team all of a sudden, you’ve got another thing coming.” 

“You have any better idea?” He replies as he steps closer to her, lowering his voice further as he does. “Like it or not, Dylan, you and me have to play nice for the moment. There’s three of us and three of them. Both of us have a better chance of getting out of here alive, if we focus on the immediate threat.” 

Gripping her hands tightly around her batons, she nearly lets herself have what she wants, and club the asshole to death right then and there, and fuck whatever else was going on. But unfortunately, she also knows the fucker has a point. As much as she wants to kill him, both of them were going to have to forget about that for now, just to make sure she didn’t die here and leave Darren to whatever fresh hell he’s living through right now as well. 

“Fine- but we’re not splitting them between us,” she sighs, “we’ll do this how we used to- I’ll do the close quarter shit, and you do what you do best whenever I duck down. By the way your holding that side of yours, I’m guessing you broke a rib or two with the last set of undead you faced, and you won’t be able to hold up against either of these two.” 

Clint, mercifully, seems to agree to her plan, and it isn’t too much longer until the tension between Morrigan and Lazarus seems to have snapped, and she’s motioning her two body guards to attack both Hunter and Clint. 

Once the fight is underway, Hunter rushes towards the two undead, placing herself in the path of both of them, as she gives Clint the best distance to fire off when he’s able to, while she starts brutally swinging her batons at her two assailants, ducking at every third beat so that Clint could shoot off a fireball whenever she gave him the clear. 

And she loathes how good the two of them are as a team, as they fall back into an old familiar dance with one another. Clint and her used to be the tag team from hell- aside from him and Robert. Both of them were absolutely merciless when the time called for it, and seemed to read one another better than most of the other Guardian pairs. 

She manages to land a couple good hits, which against a living person, likely would have caused some kind of slowed effort, but she finds Mordred and Ramses are more than able to carry on just as well no matter how hard of a crack she gives them with her batons. 

“Think we’re going to need a plan b soon,” she huffs between labored breaths as she continues to fight against the two undead. 

[nightxhunter]

lazarusdoe​:

just off the elevator outside of the holding cells, guardian tower ( @nightxhunter​. )

It feels like a small miracle that they even made it to the elevator without running into problems, they think, and it does feel like maybe it was the wrong choice now that they’re in it, standing in silence, as they fiddle with their favorite knife, stungun tucked under their arm, always preferring something a little closer, given their powers. They’re glad that they’re with Hunter, they trust her in a weird way, both of them having given each other pretty damn personal information to try to make sense of things. It does make them realize, though, that in the mess of everything else happening, they never had a chance to tell her what had happened when they were to see her brother, haven’t gotten the chance to mention that memory they saw of hers, or his, yet. It’s tempting as hell to go ahead and just do that in the eerily silent elevator ride, but they know it is absolutely not the time to get into that when they both need to be focused.

Still, they do glance over at her, as the elevator starts up, and at least mention part of it. “Thanks, by the way, for telling me to go see your brother. It helped a whole lot…” they say a little awkwardly, looking back at the buttons, never really great at the whole sincerity thing, with people they don’t know well, despite the changes they’ve been making recently. 

Lazarus falls silent again for a second, considering what the hell will happen if the elevator doors open and it’s Mind Master there fighting whatever villains are around, which makes them glance at her again, but they decide against verbalizing it, suddenly feeling a little superstitious, like they might jinx it into happening if they do say it out loud, no wood to knock on around. They’re not really the praying type anymore, but something about that thought makes them feel like maybe now’s a good time to revert back a little. “Please, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, let it be anyone, but Ramses.” Because despite their conversation with Captain Covert, they really don’t want to find out if they’re a firstborn or not, especially when they know that Hunter is.

The elevator dings and the doors open, before they can really defend the sudden superstition, and for a split second they’re relieved, as the hallway seems empty. It is empty for now, but there’s something else going on nearby, they can tell that much. “Oh, fuck me,” they sigh, as they step out of the elevator, the overwhelming smell of smoke, of something burning, a clear indication of at least one of the people they’re gonna find on this floor. And they don’t really like the idea of having to help Flame Thrower, and they’re sure as shit that Night Hunter isn’t going to like that idea, either, especially when they don’t even know who else they might come face to face with. In fact, they think maybe they should just take him out of the equation if they can safely, perform this stupid rescue mission with him laid out. They look over at Hunter, frowning slightly, but they don’t let their guard down, just in case someone appears before they can make their plan. 

“You don’t have to save him, I’ll deal with him. Hell, I’ll knock him the fuck out and drag him out of here with whatever zombies we can wrangle, if I have to, make this as painless as possible.”

.

After making it to the elevator with relatively no trouble at all, she finds herself all the more concerned for what they were about to find in the above floors. The one they’d first entered bore the scars of battle, but none of its soldiers. Which meant they were in the floors above- they had to be, she thinks to herself as the elevator begins to slowly rise. Part of her hopes that its her brother they find first, and that they can remove him from this mess before he gets himself killed. The other part of her though, hoped that someone stronger than her would find him first, someone like Zenith and Shadow or Dulce and Reaper. 

When Lazarus speaks it seems her brother is on their mind as well, as he’s the first thing they mention. To be honest, she’d nearly forgotten about their last exchange and the path she’d set them on that would lead them to asking her brother for help. It doesn’t surprise her though that Darren had managed to help in some way, given his skill in the matters of the mind. 

“Good,” is all she manages to say, preferring that they not get much deeper in that conversation for now. Lazarus seems to agree though, as they soon begin mumbling a prayer, which hey- if she was the religious sort she’d probably be praying her fucking heart out right now too. 

Which maybe she should have anyway, once the doors to the elevator open, and the first thing that hits her is the smell of something burning. She grips tightly to the wooden batons in her hand, waiting for something to come rushing at them the moment the smell reaches her, but they’re still met with the an eerily quiet hallway. 

Perhaps this was the work of the one called Fearmonger, she thinks to herself, as her eyes scan the hall, looking for the source of the smell but not finding it yet. Because if there was one thing some fucker would try to scare her with it’d be flames- and the threat of being trapped somewhere surrounded by them. When Lazarus speaks again though, its clear that this won’t be some fucked up nightmare someone has concocted for her, but rather an all too real one. 

“Good, because if I get a chance, I’m going to fucking kill him,” she mutters through gritted teeth, fighting back the fear that was threatening to take over. 

She faces that fear head on, as she leads them down the hallway and towards the section of the floor where the smoke seemed to be coming from. Before she knows it, she’s led them into what looked like a miniature prison. The room they’re in now, seemed to be the man conjuncture point of several additional hallways, branching off that contained what looked like holding cells, and anything else the Guardians deemed necessary for this little set-up of theirs. 

Her attention is soon stolen though as she sees Clint Courtney’s lumbering frame walking in their direction. He hasn’t seemed to notice them yet, he seems to have an injury to his side that his attention has been stolen from, his movements are slow and pained, but he doesn’t seem afraid there were any other threats he needed to be aware of. 

When he finally looks up to the pair of them, his face falls for a moment, before a incredulous laugh slips out of him. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he says at last, as his gaze flickers between her and Lazarus. 

“What you were hoping for someone else?” She smirks before pulling her mask down, seeing no use for it given their present company. “Don’t worry, that makes two of us.” 

She grips tightly onto every bit of strength she has as he continues to look between the two of them. They should just fucking leave him there, and she is about to turn to Lazarus and say just that before the sprinkler system kicks on, likely trying to douse whatever flame Clint had produced. 

“Is there anyone else in here but you?” She asks, figuring they should at least make sure they were in the clear before they got the hell out of there. 

“Think so,” Clint grumbles as he looks back down the hallway he’d come out of, “I ran into some trouble back there, but got it taken care of. It wasn’t one of the undead villains though. It was a couple undead heroes- apparently your cemetery wasn’t the only one to get hit.” 

[nightxhunter]

zenith-moi​:

Zenith almost wants to flinch away from the question, but it doesn’t sound like an accusation. Some of the bite has gone out of Hunter’s voice, and it seems almost like she just wants to know. It makes Zenith have to examine herself, introspective. Why did she always feel like she needed to keep secrets? Why did she do any of this, split herself up into a thousand different pieces. She’s been doing that since she was a kid, though. There was the little girl who charmed everyone she met, a twelve year old devoted to her father and effortlessly poilite. And there was the same pre-teen who got home from school and let her dad run her through training course after training course until she was a creature of perfect control. The two never seemed to meet, even then, except when he looked at her. He was one of the only people who knew her through and through, every side and every secret and every flaw. And he was gone, and she still didn’t really know what happened to him. 

“Maybe I thought I’d ruin you.” She goes for, with a shake of her head. Because she wonders sometimes if loving her is a death wish. Because half the people she’s ever stopped to consider her family are six feet under ground. Even if she didn’t have anything to do with it, it’s still a sting. And she’s self aware enough to know it’s part of the reason she keeps everyone at arm’s length. Even the people she adores. “But it does make me weaker, doesn’t it? You could do anything you wanted to me and I probably wouldn’t try to stop you.” 

It’s a hard truth to acknowledge. If anyone else held power over her, she would probably try to destroy them. She would ruin their lives. She wouldn’t flinch. But Hunter has… special privileges, it seems, in her mind and against her will. And she’s clearly been so hurt and so damaged by everything, Zenith couldn’t bring herself to do anything else that would hurt. That was why she was here, telling her about Darren, answering her questions.

“Is I don’t know an acceptable answer here? I mean, I like… being where my dad was, for so long. It feels like I grew up there, sometimes. And I like the resources. I like building beautiful things. I don’t love handing them over to people like Robert. But I do it anyway, I guess, because I know I’ll break it eventually.” She frowns, thinking for a minute. “I don’t like the people, really. Except for Cap.” A small phantom of a smile spreads across her face, more sad than anything. “And I liked Artemis.” 

And then she shakes her head. “But I don’t like it as much as I like this. The Collective is… ugh, don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those people who thinks that this is my family. Blue is as close as I get to that. But it’s a business, at the end of the day. But I have friends here, and I can be… all the parts of me that I thought I needed to keep a secret.” And she looks at Hunter then, shrugs her shoulders. “Did you like it there? Do you like it here?”

The more Zenith speaks the more pieces of the puzzle she feels like she’s finally receiving that made up the enigma that was the villain. She’s still upset that she hadn’t told her sooner, that the moment they’d gotten back in touch here, Zenith didn’t recognize that what she needed most wasn’t more flirtatious banter spoken from behind a mask- but this. 

She also can’t help but wonder, that if she’d known that MOI was Zenith back when she was Artemis, if it would had taken her so long to join the Collective. Perhaps instead of living on her own for years, constantly watching her back, she would have gone to Zenith instead. But none of that really mattered now, she supposes. What’s done was done, and now she needed to figure out just how they moved forward from here- because she wants to still move forward with her, in whatever way best made sense given everything else that’d happened. 

“Do you think I would do something to you?” She asks, again her tone is more genuine than accusatory, because she’s still trying to figure out precisely just how Zenith felt about all of this. “Something that would put you at jeopardy of either losing your place here, or back at the Tower?” 

She still finds there’s more questions than answers with Zenith, and she’s not quite certain if she’ll ever learn the truth to them all. Zenith had always been a mystery to her, which initially was part of the allure of their exchanges, but now she wanted desperately to know just who exactly she was really at the end of the day. Because Zenith and MOI were just two characters she played, two halves of herself that she kept far apart from each other, and Hunter still didn’t feel like she really knew the real woman that made up the varying pieces of her. 

She returns the small smile on Zenith’s face, at the mention of her own former self- Artemis, but doesn’t comment further, letting Zenith finish the rest of her answer before she does. When she voices her own questions, Hunter pauses, giving herself to think first and answer the question with the same amount of introspection Zenith had given hers. 

“I haven’t necessarily liked anywhere I’ve been, whether it be here or at the Tower. The Guardians were a viper’s nest, that I thought I had a decent handle on until I didn’t. And here... well I’m really only a member in name. I don’t feel any strong attachment to the place, or most of the people. But I’ve never been one to do that anyway. You and Hyde are the only two I talk to on a somewhat regular basis- I talk to Reaper too, but I’m not sure he really counts as someone I’m close to per say.” Danny could be one day, she thinks, but she didn’t want to be too forward thinking in that regard. 

“When you told me the truth...,” she says slowly, venturing into the topic she was most curious about, “what did you want to happen? As much as you said that you did it for me, there had to be a reason you did it for yourself too.”