WAR: WIIGF 2 (DCAMU/Celestial Nexus (Patreon)

“I need to…” She needed a lot of things, honestly.

A stiff drink, a hot meal, a husband who had less of a drinking problem than she did… many, many many things she needed.

But right now…“I need to pick better shifts.”Right now, Madelyn King needed a warm bed.

The dim hallway was a blessing after too much fluorescence, the flickering light bulb overhead giving off a weak piss-yellow glow that matched the color of the peeling wallpaper. Speaking of piss, Madelyn let her eyes trail up and up to the ceiling, the woman letting out a sigh as she took in the sight of a water stain on the ceiling looking no different than an old sunburn on her Uncle Al’s back. From the bathroom, the house’s old pipes rattled like an old ghost’s chains, a sound Maddy knew almost as well as she did her own heartbeat. Just some coffee when I get home… She blinked tired eyelids, barely holding back the urge to rub at them. Is that too much to ask, Harry?

The nurse swayed on her feet, an eleven-hour shift at St. Bernies always amazing at making the whole world feel like the deck of a cruise ship. The scent of antiseptic was layered deep in the wrinkles of her blue scrubs, and even deeper in her nostrils than she liked but it was nothing a hot shower couldn’t fix.

Even still, a hot shower wouldn’t be able to evict the shadows that took up space under her eyes, permanent residents that hadn’t taken a day off since she turned thirty. Those same green eyes flicked downwards to her arm, the cheap digital watch on her wrist reading 6:41 AM. 

Too late to be awake. 

Too early to be this pissed.

Calloused fingers found the thin, worn gold of her wedding band, Maddy twisting it to the right then the left then rightward again. It was a familiar pattern, something she always did when her thoughts went deeper than just a little anxiety or a sprinkle of stress. Her gaze flickered down the hall, the door opposite a bathroom, and the complete other direction from the master bedroom she should be headed to.

There were more important things than sleep.

She raised a hand to the door opposite the bathroom, knuckles hesitating an inch from the wood before tapping softly. “Kenny…” 

Her voice was rough with exhaustion but it was as soft as she could make it. “You awake in there? Need to check your hand again, sweetie."

A noise that was at least half-grunt and half-groan, but every inch the classic sound of a teenage boy sounded back at her unintelligibly. 

"If you need me to… I could… maybe head down to that school during my lunch break on Monday," the threat was automatic, not something she wanted to do necessarily, but something she almost had to. "Talk to the principal about what happened—"

"Please, God, noooooo,” her little boy’s voice slurred from inside his room.

“Kenneth Isaac Charles King, if you do-”

“Ma, I’m begging you," the slurring was gone now as he cut her off, most of it edged out for just a firm, almost angry tone. "Just… iunno, leave it alone or whatever. Ain’t that big."

Maddy King’s sigh was long and tired, physically and emotionally, as she felt the fight drain out of her, just accepting her son’s words instead of keeping this going. "At least let me redress it before you go to school. And you better be taking the Ibuprofen I left outside your door last night."

She heard the reluctant scrape of feet on the floor inside, the sound moving closer. Her own voice softened, the nurse receding, leaving just the mother behind. "There's scrambled eggs on the stove. And Cece's still sleeping, so keep it down when you go downstairs."

"I'm good. Go sleep, Ma."

"Don’t… You can just wake me up if… if... anything changes.” Not so subtle code for I’m worried about you.

“...okay, ma.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Twenty-seven seconds. Twenty-eight. 

The old floorboards in the hallway groaned under Ma's weight for a few more seconds, a few more footsteps, until the master bedroom door finally clicked shut.As soon as he heard that, the long slow breath he’d been holding tight found itself free to float around his stuffy little room.

Kenneth stood up from his bed and his bare feet found the worn spots in the carpet, the ones that only got deeper every single time he paced this same damn route. Door to window. Window to dresser. Dresser back to door. 

Ten by twelve feet of his life, boxed up neat and tidy with water stains on the ceiling and paint peeling off everything like some kinda diseased skin. He shook his head, eyes trailing down to the thing making his life harder than it already was right now, and let out a small little hiss of pain.

The gauze around his right hand was already starting to go the same color as the wallpaper, all yellow and ugly enough to make him kinda regret not letting his mom change them for him before she went to bed. Nah, Ma needs her sleep, he frowned a little but he knew it was for the best anyway. I’ll be fine anyway. The metacarpals weren't snapped—he'd asked last night when his mom wrapped it up, and she'd given him that look that meant I know what I'm doing, Kenneth—but they felt like loose gravel grinding around under the skin.

Every time he flexed his fingers, especially.

He knew his face wasn't much better, which sucked ‘cus his face was honestly the best part of him. Kenny turned to face the mirror, free hand going up to his chin as he rubbed it, staring at all the bruises and shit purpling up on his dark skin. Even with his dreads all in his face, he could still make them out too. Fuckin…

His split lip tugged tight when he tried to talk, nose still tender enough that breathing through it felt like sucking air through broken glass. Jimmy Kostas had good hands for a mouth-breathing piece of shit and that fuckin’ bloodsucker after him hadn’t helped what the dickhead from South Bludhaven had already done to him. Already wincing like a little baby, his left hand drifted up to touch the swelling around his eye, purple-black and ugly as week-old meat.

His stomach suddenly sounded off, announcing its existence with a growl that told him all he needed to know. Yeah, yeah… His fault anyway. Last night’s dinner of porkchops and gravy had been skipped in favor of trying to piece his skull back together. 

Not literally, but Christ, it felt like a crackhead had gone crazy with a ball peen to the side of his brainpan.

Ken’s tongue clicked on the roof of his mouth, the teenager shutting his eyes as his brain felt like it was still rattling around. His eyes flicked back open, light green eyes staring out of his room’s single window over his bed. The cracked glass showed him pretty much the same view it always did: brick wall, fire escape that'd probably collapse if you looked at it wrong, and a narrow slice of October sky the color of old dishwater.

Fuckin’ Bludhaven. It was home, though.

And that was kinda funny, honestly, because he knew real well how shitty home could be.

A couple seconds later, Ken’s eyes caught on the desk wedged in the corner, and the joke stopped being funny. Clothes everywhere, typical messy disaster zone, nothing he thought different about but that wasn’t what caught his attention. 

There on the scarred desktop was a neat line of precision screwdrivers all laid out on a rubber mat, all of them polished and oiled and taken care of. Phillips head, flathead, Torx bits arranged by size. Computer repair tools that he'd begged his dad to buy when he was barely nine; the same tools he never learned how to use, but somehow his little hands had known exactly how to grip them. How to pop the case off a laptop without cracking the plastic. How to reseat RAM without frying the board.

How the hell did I know that stuff? He’d never thought about it before, because it seemed obvious when he was that age, but he heard his parents talking about it confused as all hell.

Now he knew. Sort of. 

The memories were still barely there, more shattered glass in a mirror than just broken, but they were definitely there. Hands that belonged to someone else but felt like his own when they moved, twenty-two years of someone who knew things, who'd lived through things, who'd died and somehow ended up with maybe a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of all his memories in a little kid’s head one day.

His head started that familiar throb, the one that came whenever he tried to think too hard about the impossible shit rattling around in there. But this time, the ache had company.

Vampires were fucking real.

Of course they were real. Why wouldn’t they be real? This was Blüdhaven, city of rust and piss, bad decisions and barely-maintained anything.

No, honestly, at this point, the fact that his hometown was overrun by unliving leeches made everything make so much more sense. He’d always wondered how a town that didn’t even have crazies like Gotham could be so goddamn shitty. And it was staring me right in the face.

He just wished he didn’t take getting punched in the face for him to realize it.

Literally, you got fuckin’ Blood and Haven mashed right together. It’s like they didn’t even try to keep a secret, a scoff left him at the obvious absolute bullshit of it all. Where else would vampires be, Cleveland? Hell, it was probably more surprising that nobody else had put two and two together before now.

His good hand drifted up to his neck, fingers a half-inch away from the same spot — that pounding pulse point — where the bloodsucker’s fangs had been going right for. Kenneth sank back onto his bed, the old springs groaning like he even cared anymore, as his left hand went up to rub his still-aching forehead. Sleeping hadn't helped the massive war in his skull raging since yesterday. The concussion and possible brain damage had eased up, sure, but his migraine was still going. He knew what it was at least, the new (old) memories staining up against his own thoughts now that he was aware of them. 

But that wasn’t the only cause for the migraine raging for his attention.

No, he had much more to freak out about than just the fact that monsters were real and hunting in his neighborhood.

Nightwing.

That name, I know that name… 

It had been the one that'd been rattling around in his skull since he woke up in the nurse’s office with half his face rearranged. He’s one of those freak meta kids in California, right? The news talked about them sometimes, calling them insane and crazy and all sorts of stuff like ‘child endangerment’ too.

He didn’t know much about them, though. Nothing serious, other than they had some kind of base in San Francisco with some kind of cushy deal with the mayor to protect the city from meta-crime, right? Yeah… yeah… Ken nodded slowly as it came back to him bit by bit, both lives working together, until… No… but… Nightwing works alone. Here. In this city.

It was true, but also untrue. 

Bludhaven didn’t have a hero. The closest thing they had to one was Batman and that was only because Gotham was a little over a half-hour drive away. 

Kenneth's good hand pressed against his temple, fingers digging into the skin. The Titans weren't just some bunch of weirdos either, were they? They were heroes. Real heroes he'd read about, watched on TV growing up as a kid. Except...

Not him, exactly.

The him that was actually him didn't know jack shit about any of that. But the memories were there anyway, sitting in his head like someone else's homework shoved in his backpack. He remembered a world where Superman wore those goofy red shorts over his blue tights, and then another memory, sharper, newer, of the suit he was wearing now. No shorts. Different logo. He remembered some Flash dude in Central City, but no Jay Garrick, no Justice Society, some Justice League that hadn't even formed yet or some shit.

The room tilted sideways all of a sudden, Ken gripping the worn fabric of his mattress as a hot wave of nausea rose up his throat from a stomach running all the way on empty. "Fuuuuuck me, bro."

Kenneth let himself fall back, head bouncing off the lumpy mattress as another burst of white flashed across his vision. They faded after a few seconds, but seconds felt like forever when your brain was trying to split itself in half. Jimmy Kostas glassed the fuck out of me. 

Brain damage explained everything, right? Except for the vampire. And the napkin. 

Not so much the computer tech knowledge, but he was still holding out hope he was just one of those savant people, like Rain Man. Wait… he blinked slow, don’t I gotta be retarded for that, first?

With a shake of his head, Kenny frowned as his eyes drifted back to the computer desk in the corner, the old beige tower sitting there looking older than Moses. The case was cracked near the fan grille, the whole thing held together with electrical tape and stubbornness, but it was his. Piece of shit ran single-player games from five years ago without catching fire, which was more than most people in this neighborhood could say about their tech.

But the computer wasn't what made his stomach twist up in knots.

The napkin sat next to the keyboard, right where he'd dropped it last night, white fabric almost glowing against the scuffed wood. Still clean. Too clean.

Kenneth pushed himself up from the bed, bare feet finding the carpet again, and crossed the room trying to look more confident than he felt. His good hand reached out, with thumb and forefinger that were moving a bit too shaky for his liking, and quickly picked up the thing resting on his computer desk.

Huh…. It felt… nice. Like, real nice high-quality stuff, the sort of fabric he knew cost too much to be any kind of synthetic. Speaking of cost, the edges were embroidered with gold, fancy thread that he knew Harry couldn’t afford even if he quit drinking. And there in the center, stitched in the same shimmering gold, were two bright letters: "KK."

Kenneth King.

"What the..." He couldn’t help the crack in his voice, sudden and high as he stared at the napkin for a few more seconds. Unsure what to even say, he ran his thumb over the embroidery, looking for machine marks, manufacturing tags, anything that made sense. Nothing. 

Not even sewing holes.

The fabric was perfect in make and appearance, as if it hadn't been dropped on a grimy-as-hell alley floor last night.

Kenneth stumbled back to his desk, napkin clutched in his good hand, and slammed the power button on the tower. The computer wheezed to life with the grinding groan of hardware that'd been pushed past its breaking point too many times. He drummed his fingers on the desk, keeping time for every half-second it took to load up, Ken doing his best infighting the pissed-off feeling as his old rustbucket of a build took its sweet time.

Finally, the desktop loaded.

Blüdhaven vampire sightings. Five digits darted across his keyboard, a single hand managing the work of two with just a little motivation. The internet might have been a shit-show but less than thiirty seconds later, the news came up.

…leaving him disappointed.

A few crackpot blogs showed up, half of them with a bunch of blurry photos of bats hanging off fire escapes. Useless conspiracy garbage.

Blüdhaven Butcher victims throat. News articles popped up, police reports, the usual grim shit about bodies found in alleys. Nothing about supernatural anything, just regular human monsters doing regular horrible things.

Nightwing Teen Titans West Coast. Fan sites. Loads and loads and loads of fan sites.

Memory of past life real. Just as helpful as before, aka not at all in the slightest. All he got this time were medical sites talking about schizophrenia. Forums full of people discussing confabulation and dissociative disorders. Brain damage. Psychotic breaks.

He slammed his good hand down on the desk, an empty can of Soder Cola NRG rattling. "This is insane," he muttered, shoving back away from the desk. "I'm insane."

According to WayneMD and Googol, he definitely was. Fuck.

Kenneth closed his eyes, trying to force the memories to… I dunno, line up? Just somehow make sense of the fucked-up jigsaw puzzle missing a chunk of pieces rattling around up in his skull. Cece's face on her fifth birthday came in clear as day; ice cream cake all over her face and on that same pink dress Ma had saved up three weeks to buy. 

That was real. It’s real! It had to be real, because he knew it was real.

But then there was the other shit. The taste of cheap breakroom coffee, bitter and burned, from some IT office he'd never stepped foot in in a weird future where he typed code into systems that he’d never heard of. 

A memory from some terrible fucking movie cut through everything else, the last memory of that older life before nothing else came through. Apokolips War. 

Kenny felt his chest rise and fall, breathing picking up as he tried to calm himself almost immediately. 

The Flash…

The Flash causing the end of everything. 

More than that, it was a total reset of the timeline, wiping everything from scratch and starting all over again.

Kenny’s eyes went wider as he realized that… Flash already did it… He already changed the whole universe.

This was too much, it was too crazy, way too big of a situation for him to handle… If this world isn't real... if it's all some kind of reboot or whatever... what happens if it gets reset again? Do I just disappear? 

A soft small knock hit his door, different from Ma's heavy, tired knocking, but enough to shake him out of his first ever panic attack. "Kenny? You talking to someone in there?"

Shit. Was I mumbling? Kenneth jolted up from the bed, shoving the napkin deep into his flannel pajama pocket as he scrambled to his feet. The locks turned under his good hand, tumblers clicking as he cracked the door open just enough to see out.

Cece stood there in the hallway, barely four feet nothing (if even that), deep green eyes too wide and too worried for a seven-year-old. Her face was a mirror of his own even if her skin and hair were both much lighter than his; she still had the same sharp cheekbones, same stubborn chin, but softer, still holding onto that kid roundness. 

Kenny forced a smile for his little sister, the kind that probably didn't fool anybody but was worth trying anyway as he squatted down to her eye level. "It's nothing, Cece. Just some idiot at school thinking he's tougher than he is."

Her small hand reached up, little fingers barely brushing the edge of the medical tape on his cheek. "Does it hurt bad?"

"Nah," his left hand came down just as easy as the lie left his mouth, Kenny ruffling her curly strawberry blonde hair. "You think your big bro that weak or sum?"

Cece's expression didn't change as she leaned in closer, voice dropping low as she whispered over to him. "Hank's in a mood. He came home late."

Kenneth's face went hard without him meaning it to, jaw clenching as he glanced down the hall toward the master bedroom. The door was still closed, but that didn't mean shit. Harry could be awake, listening, waiting for an excuse. Any excuse. "Stay in your room till I come get you for school, okay? Don't come out till you hear me."

She nodded, quick and serious, then scurried back to her room like a mouse heading for its hole. Kenneth closed his door as gently as he could, the sound of the locks clicking back into place feeling loud as gunshots in the quiet hallway. He pressed his back against the wood, listening until he heard her door click shut.

Only then did he pull the napkin back out of his pocket, staring at the thing like it could tell him a secret. "Like, where the fuck did you come from, man?" The words came out in a whisper, barely there.

Kenneth didn't get a chance to think about it any more than that. From down the hall, a floorboard creaked under a heavy, deliberate footstep.

Hank was awake.