Apollo hung, suspended mentally as well as physically. His mind angled
for the gravity-pull of the
unconscious, almost snaring it several times despite the pain and
misery he felt.
A low crooning sound filled the empty space around him, seeming to come
from the walls themselves.
He had heard it once before: in shock and traumatized, trying to deal
with the memory of his rape
and beating at the hands of the Commander, unable to face even
Midnighter, he had heard the same
crooning without attaching any special significance to it. Still, he
had found it soothing, the
reminder of the living ship's presence at a time when the presence of
anyone else would have been
unbearable. Now, hearing the same sound again, he realized that the
Carrier was doing it on
purpose; alive and empathic, she felt his pain and was giving him what
comfort she could.
He felt overwhelmed with gratitude, out of all proportion to such a
small gesture, the most that
could be granted him. He cried without strength for a few seconds, the
water gathering in his eyes
until it overflowed. In another moment the mild hysteria had passed,
leaving him drained, afloat
in numb calmness. Sleep finally began to close in on him.
But then his head jerked up again, sleep banished once more by reality.
He had been at that stage
immediately preceding sleep, where familiar objects and conscious
trains of thought take on
fantastic proportions. Last Call's face, grotesquely distorted, had
swum before his mind's eye. It
wore the same look of vicious smugness that had been there when he told
Apollo about the fate of
his teammates. Apollo had assumed that the rest of the team had been
killed, and couldn't
understand why he had been chosen to live. Last Call had enlightened
him. The others were still
alive; but like Apollo, they were being held captive and tortured, and
would be until the powers
that hated them were content they had suffered enough, which could take
years. Then they would
die.
Except for the Midnighter. Midnighter was already dead.
At the time, Apollo had believed what he was told. Last Call had been
too self-satisfied, too
pleased to be the one to break the news to be making it up. Apollo had
understood why some people
believe that grief can kill, and only wished that it would kill him.
But hope persisted, as
stubbornly alive as a cockroach. Last Call had carried on with the
beating, interspersing blows
with descriptions of what Apollo's teammates were being made to suffer,
dwelling on the details
with relish. But he'd given no more information on Midnighter, not on
how he had died, not even on
if he had seen the body himself. Apollo couldn't stop recalling all the
tight spots he had seen
his lover in over the years. The more he thought about it, the harder
it was to believe that
Midnighter couldn't have found a way out somehow.
But even though there was a chance, Apollo knew the odds were against
it. Hope remained, but was
harder to bear than grief. The uncertainty of it tormented him. He had
to stop himself from
questioning Last Call, digging for details until hope was annihilated.
While he hoped, he couldn't
give in to despair, couldn't stop struggling, couldn't rest.
The ship continued to croon, and he tried to imagine the sound waves
washing him clean of
tormenting thoughts. It didn't work. He wanted to believe in an
afterlife, be comforted by the
thought of an eternity that would shrink this time and it's misery into
nothingness. But that was
impossible if he couldn't be sure that Midnighter was already there,
waiting for him, not still
alive, making plans with all the cunning and patience that made him the
most dangerous man in the
world. Midnighter kept him bound to life.
Drowsy again, he felt the pressure of a full bladder and released it
without thinking. At first,
he had been suspicious when they had given him food and water. With his
power cells barely charged
he had needed to eat to live, and he assumed they were keeping him
alive to prolong his agony.
When they hadn't let him down to use the bathroom, he realized that
their intention was to
humiliate as well as hurt. He was careful not to let on that it wasn't
half as effective as they
imagined. In this respect, what Storm God and the Commander had done to
him actually helped him.
Even though he had survived, and he and Midnighter had found them again
later and taken it out of
them with interest, he had thought at the time that he would die. The
humiliation of rape, the
pain of his beating, and the horror of death had all combined to make
him suffer in a way he could
hardly believe. His current torturers would have to go to much greater
extremes before they
reached a similar standard.
Besides, with his nose squashed flat, sinuses clogged with mucus and
congealed blood, he didn't
even have to worry about the smell.
He was really asleep when a change in sound woke him up again. Silence.
The Carrier had stopped
her crooning, but the quiet was somehow much louder. Then Apollo heard
it - footsteps approaching
the door. He told himself automatically that it couldn't be Midnighter;
whoever was coming wasn't
bothering with stealth. It was just Last Call, coming to give him his
daily thrashing. He raised
his head and braced himself.
The door opened. But Last Call was nowhere in sight - it was Teuton who
entered, alone. Teuton,
who accompanied Last Call more often than not, but never took part in
the beatings himself; just
lounged nearby, saying little, drinking beer after beer as if he was
watching a football game on
TV. Teuton, who watched him from under his drooping eyelids, his pouty,
eurotrash popstar face
inscrutable. He approached Apollo now, his face as bland as ever,
curiously mismatched with his
genetically enhanced physique. But while his face revealed none of the
cheerful malice that was
always evident in Last Call's face, Apollo felt a chill. A horrible
suspicion, not new, was
pushing itself out of the psychological soil he had buried it in.
It was almost a relief when Teuton's massive fist pounded his jaw,
re-shattering bones that had
barely begun to heal.
~*~
Midnighter crouched in a corner of the ceiling, tense, watchful,
waiting for the moment to move.
His enhancements allowed him to block out the sounds closest to him, to
the point where he didn't
even hear them: his own and Jenny's heartbeats, their breathing, the
barely-audible sucking sounds
Jenny made on her pacifier. Like Midnighter, Jenny was alert and tense,
silent, more still than
anyone would ever expect a wakeful toddler to be. Had Midnighter's
attention not been completely
absorbed by the scene below, he would have been impressed.
Beneath them, Teuton was laying into Apollo. Teuton - Apollo's
"replacement." The idea made
Midnighter's lip curl. Bad enough that the public had accepted a
homophobic bully as a suitable
successor for the Midnighter, but the idea that this snivelling
psychopath was being flaunted as
the new Apollo made him burn.
That was okay. It took more than surgical enhancements to make the
Midnighter as dangerous as he
was; it was his patience that gave him the edge. It cost him, but he
held his rage and hate in
check, waiting for the right moment to act. It would be foolish to
attack openly - Teuton was an
idiot, but he was also more powerful than Midnighter, and probably
telepathically linked with his
teammates as well. Besides, it wouldn't do for Apollo to spot his lover
until the danger was past.
It felt cruel, but Apollo was naturally impulsive, sure to be
emotionally ragged after weeks of
such treatment, had doubtless been told that Midnighter was dead, and
would probably react without
thinking. Even if the reaction was slight and quickly repressed, Teuton
could still notice.
Eventually, Teuton would have enough of pummelling Apollo and leave, or
he would let his guard
down in a moment of fatal carelessness. Until then, Midnighter had no
choice but to let Apollo
suffer.
With unexpected abruptness, Teuton was bored.
"Ah, I am tired with all
this hitting and hitting."
He jogged backwards a couple of steps and gave Apollo a strange look,
nervous and speculative.
"You know what makes me so depressed? I expected that Last Call and I
would make for more of a
team thing, like you and Midnighter used to be ..."
Midnighter held his breath, every protective nerve-end firing. He
didn't know for sure why Teuton
had suddenly halted, mid-beating, and started sharing confidences, but
he was making guesses, all
of them bad.
"I tried to tell him," Teuton continued, still giving Apollo that
strange look, "we could be night
and day, man! Summer and winter. I tried to interest him in this one
photo pose together, or maybe
like this, with back to back -" He demonstrated, an insulting imitation
of the "World's Finest
Couple" shot from the first magazine cover Apollo and Midnighter had
posed for. "But for him all
of this is too gay. Every idea I have for us to be together is for him
a slur on his 'stallion'
reputation.
"But you I respect." He moved closer, grasping Apollo's face between
his hands.
The intimacy of the touch offended Midnighter, even more than the
beating had. It made his stomach
ache to remember that Teuton had to be killed quickly, before he saw it
coming, without having to
suffer in the way the Commander had suffered. Even though Teuton was
putting a fear into Apollo
that merited the most painful of punishments, he would die mercifully,
without fear or pain
himself.
Never mind. The moment was now, the moment was perfect. Teuton's back
was to the corner that hid
Midnighter, and he was close enough to Apollo to block his view of
anything else. Midnighter
released his hold and dropped, landing on the concrete floor without a
sound.
~*~
"But you I respect."
His hands squeezed, lightly grinding broken bone, greedy eyes taking in
every hint of pain. Apollo
froze, his heart hammering.
"Sexuality is a complex and beautiful thing." The hands slid down to
his chest, palms over
nipples, fingers digging into bruised ribs. "One time I had strange
thoughts about broadening my
horizons, and I wondered ... since we are here ..."
He was going to do it. Christ, Apollo thought, Jesus Christ please
help me.
Because he knew he couldn't take it a second time. Inside, he felt like
he was shrinking,
retreating, looking for somewhere to hide. He would be in extremis by
the time Teuton was
finished with him. When he had been raped by the Commander it had been
unexpected, and now he saw
that the shock had protected him from how bad it could really get. The
anticipation, coming on top
of weeks of torture, would break him at last. And even if Midnighter
was still out there somewhere
he would be too late. There would be nothing of Apollo left to rescue,
just a battered shell with
a shrunken mind cringing inside, unable to distinguish friends from
enemies and trying to hide
from all ...
Teuton's face was so close it filled his sight. There was the horrible
intimacy of his breath on
Apollo's face. His voice was soft, almost tender.
"It's quiet. No-one will know, yeah?" The hands slid down to his hips
and pulled him close, belly
to belly. Apollo tried to struggle, but with no strength or leverage he
was trapped between
Teuton's hands. Teuton didn't seem to notice.
"You're going to be a dead man soon, Apollo. But before that, I think
it's time to experience
something altogether different -"
Then something odd happened. Teuton suddenly said, "Gnk," through a
tightly clenched jaw and blood
jetted out between his teeth. His eyes widened until the red veins
showed, one still fixed on
Apollo, the other knocked slightly inwards by some unseen force. The
center of his forehead bulged
as if there was an explosion inside his skull. Then his hands fell from
Apollo's hips and his
lifeless carcass slumped, revealing Midnighter standing behind him, as
Apollo had known for the
last eighth of a second he would be.
Midnighter looked down at several hundred pounds of dead meat, his
voice hoarse with anger.
"Glad
to oblige, asshole."
In spite of the pain, Apollo felt his mouth stretch into a smile. His
eyes were streaming from joy
and relief.
"I knew they couldn't kill you."
Midnighter laid a hand on his face, very, very gently.
As Jenny released the energy she had taken from the Carrier, healing
Apollo and recharging his
energy cells, Midnighter quickly studied the amount of damage he could
see. Apollo's good looks
were entirely buried beneath bruises and swelling. His torso had
sustained less obvious damage,
and Midnighter could detect no broken bones or other significant
damage. Which meant that once
fully charged, Apollo would be able to fight. Midnighter felt a burst
of pride at his lover's
strength and endurance.
Nearby, an open door revealed an adjoining bathroom with a floor that
looked clean. Midnighter
lifted Apollo down from the hook he was hanging from, carried him to
the bathroom and laid him on
the tiles, rolling up his trench coat to use as a makeshift pillow.
After setting Jenny down,
unwrapping the chains from Apollo's arms and checking for gangrene, he
took a towel from a
handrail by the sink and wet it under the faucet. Then, cradling
Apollo's head on one arm, he set
about gently wiping every trace of blood, sweat, snot, saliva and tears
from his lover's face.
When it was as clean as he could make it, he put the towel aside and
lowered his head. Apollo's
mouth opened to his kiss.
Like rain in a desert, that kiss. Apollo's taste, Apollo's smell,
Apollo's warmth, Apollo's glow,
Apollo's heartbeat, all engaged Midnighter's senses as if they were
kissing for the first time. He
probed very carefully with his tongue, feeling the teeth become firm
again in the rapidly-mending
jaw. Everything else slowed and retreated for a moment.
When Midnighter lifted his head it was to say, "Let's just get married,
Apollo. Okay? No more
fucking around. Get married and adopt Jenny."
Apollo was feeling a sense of urgency that seemed to come with his
returning strength, but he
couldn't resist wasting a few more seconds, trailing his fingers around
Midnighter's mouth and
beneath his chin, smiling.
"Sounds good," he said.
"Speaking of Jenny," he added a moment later, "how exactly is she doing
that?"
They both looked at the infant, who was sitting quietly by Apollo,
still serenely emitting a
golden stream of light that seeped into Apollo's bruised frame.
"The Carrier let her draw if from the caged baby universe in the engine
room," Midnighter told
him. "You remember how it powers the ship, right?"
"With the energy of a billion baby suns." He reached out a hand to
Jenny, loving the feel of her
chubby hands gripping his big forefinger. Then he slowly stood up,
wincing slightly from the
wounds that hadn't fully healed, and grabbed the towel.
In ten minutes he had scrubbed even the memory of filth from himself.
Midnighter reached into the
folds of his trench coat and withdrew a spare of Apollo's uniform. He
had stolen it weeks ago;
rumbles of displeasure, whispered to him by ex-lovers and friends in
government positions, had
given him a sense of foreboding that had built until he decided to act
on it and prepare for the
worst. For weeks he'd been rigging up an empty concrete cube that he'd
discovered in the sewers of
a major American city, safe and dry above the level of waste, making it
fit for post-human
habitation. He had taken the uniform almost as an afterthought - if the
powers that be found some
way to overcome the Carrier and her occupants, their move would be
swift and sudden. Midnighter
didn't believe that he'd have time to grab Apollo as well as Jenny. He
had told himself that if
worse came to worst, the uniform would be a souvenir, the only thing of
Apollo's he would have
left. He had insisted to himself that he was too much of a realist to
hope otherwise. Whatever
force ran the universe wouldn't let him and Apollo slip away twice with
a murdered team behind
them.
He hadn't told anyone else about the hideaway. Not even Apollo. He had
been tempted; never had he
come so close to just ignoring the numbers his enhancements crunched
out. But he had reacted to a
general sense of menace, not a specific threat he could warn anyone
else about. The odds were that
the sort of strike he feared would kill them all before they had time
to react. If so, Midnighter,
thanks to his enhanced reflexes, would be the only one with a chance of
opening a door in time or
escaping in some other way - the only one, in other words, with a
chance of living long enough to
avenge the rest of the team. If not, if the others were captured but
kept alive, then knowing
where Midnighter was would mean betraying where Midnighter was,
willingly or not. Without that
knowledge, one last hope remained.
Dressed, Apollo had Midnighter re-wrap his arms in chains, then hung
himself again from the hook
dangling from the ceiling. Compared to Midnighter, Last Call's
enhancements were only so-so; it
would take his eyes a few seconds to adjust from the bright corridor to
the dim gymnasium. More
than enough time for Apollo to fry him before he could see that he was
facing not the battered
victim he had left, but the Apollo of old.
Midnighter kissed him again, regretting for a moment the restraint that
Jenny's presence put on
them. But there were also other concerns constraining them.
"Two of them are coming," he said. "They're about a quarter of a mile
away. I'll leave."
"Okay. Get that cunt that stole Angie's nanobots first, if you meet her
before I do. That'll break
the mind control she has over the others."
Midnighter was startled. Apollo didn't use language like that - he had
too much respect for women.
And it was usually Apollo who told Midnighter off for using bad
language in front of Jenny. But he
and Angie had been close, and he had been suffering for weeks.
Midnighter let it pass.
Another brief kiss and Apollo was alone again, Midnighter vanishing so
quickly that even Apollo,
who knew him, couldn't say where he had gone or when the exact moment
of his departure was.
~Fin~
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