#goreillas.

[drunivers]

@goreillas: THEY'LL LOVE YOU. JUST LIKE I DO.

"oh, sure," she comes out swinging, her tone bitingly sarcastic. like an injured dog baring its teeth. "'what does your family do, artemis?' gee, mrs. west, thanks for asking. my dad's actually a b-list supervillain who kills people with sports equipment. my sister's taken up the family business, and may be singlehandedly responsible for the current power vacuum in kazhnia. and my mom, well, she's gone on the straight and narrow, but only after six years in maximum security lockup. pass the potatoes?"

artemis has faced down death a lot in her career as a vigilante. that's not scary. the idea of meeting wally's parents on the other hand? terrifying. they're going to think she's a bad influence. why wouldn't they? their family photos are with the flash, not someone on the no-fly list. they'd be crazy to approve of their only son dating some random supervillain's daughter. not that she cares. well, okay, of course she cares, because she cares about wally. she doesn't want to be the cause of some stupid family fight.

artemis leans her head on wally's shoulder with a defeated sigh. "maybe we shouldn't go. we probably shouldn't go. can we cancel? i could always fake my own death again."

[drunivers]

quintavius clark is not a violent man. he does not stoop to baser instincts even when the situation may call for it.

he has to remind himself this now. he’d cooperated — been a perfect hostage, even helped the hellshire gang, as these miscreants call themselves, with their injuries when he could (might as well put his medical training to use in the time it would take his ransom to arrive by courier). all fair and by the book.

except when the ransom arrived, caleb quinn had counted the money and then calmly shot the courier in the face with that ghoulish gun of his. he’d said something quintavius didn’t register, on account of his ears still ringing from the shot.

that had been three days ago, and quintavius hadn’t spoken since. he’d tried to do a hunger strike, to signal his discontent with the situation, but he’d given up after the second day, not used to being actually hungry.

here, though, here is his defiance: when caleb quinn comes to the flimsy excuse of a tent that’s become his ‘cell’, quintavius tells him plainly that he won’t be playing doctor to his thieves anymore.

@goreillas: I’M NOT USED TO BEING REFUSED.

“i can tell,” he’s seething: anger and spite and moral outrage, pent up days of it, bursting like a broken dam. “but our situation remains thus: hand me a scalpel and i will take your bloody eye out with it before i aid you or any of your men.” he doesn’t know why caleb hasn’t just let him go, but quintavius is going to make the gunslinger regret it.