Chapter 24: The Crashing Hour
Rebecca's wings slammed against the psychic dome with a force that rattled every rib in her monstrous body. The shimmering sky above Gotham Zoo quaked, a spiderweb of cracks spidering across the invisible barrier. Down below, Ace swayed on her feet, her skin gone from porcelain-pale to the color of old milk.
Hot, thick, Sweat beaded at her brow, her breathing ragged, her mind stretched thin as paper. She could feel her own thoughts flickering at the edges of blackout, but she gritted her teeth and forced the cracks to heal. She wasn't dying today . . . . .
not yet, at least. Not until she'd kept her one, small promise.
She could hear Jervis's voice somewhere behind her eyes and mind, in the thick parts of her memories, the memories she didn't mind thinking about every so often, a warbling singsong of "Twinkle, twinkle, little bat…" as he dangled in Rebecca's grip, hat askew, feet scrambling at empty air.
Ace had to blink a few times; the fog and white noise in her head were just a little too much, and she was mixing up her memories with current events. . . . something she told herself couldn't mean she was over the hill just yet; she still had time. . . .
The Mad Hatter was terrified, but even now, some dim part of him was cataloguing the chaos, tucking it away for later use. "Stories, stories, so many stories," he muttered, lips twitching.
Ace's vision swam. She couldn't keep this up for long. Every second, the dome drained more of her life. She could feel it, marrow-deep, the slow burn of her own mind unraveling.
She'd known this would happen, eventually. She'd always known her life would be short, her power too much for any one girl to hold. But she'd also known kindness, in rare flashes. Jervis had read her Alice in Wonderland, half-reciting, half-chanting, his voice strange and strangely gentle in the cold, sterile halls of Cadmus. They'd both been locked away, used and prodded and drained, and she'd promised herself that if she ever got the chance, she'd save him, even if it cost her everything.
Rebecca's eyes. . .
those impossibly bright, burning green eyes . . . .
. . . . locked onto Ace. She remembered the way her grandpa's hands had felt, warm and rough, the way he'd never looked afraid, not even when she'd hurt people. She remembered the nightmares, the flying man, the dark, the hunger for silence and still, the craving for more noise.
She remembered the first time she'd changed, the pain, the fear, the taste of blood in her mouth. She remembered wishing, just once, that someone would hold her and say, "It's all right. You're still you."
Now, she was a comet, auburn hair streaming like fire behind her, jaws open, scream building in her chest. The sound blasted across the garden, a sonic and psychic hurricane that tore up the stage, the ground, the trees, the tables, even the air itself. Ace braced herself, raising a trembling hand, and poured every scrap of power she had into a shield. The blast hit hard, hard enough to drive her to her knees, hard enough to make her nose bleed, hard enough to make her see flashes of childhood: Cadmus labs, the Joker's grin, the endless white rooms of the Royal Flush Gang.
For a second, Ace wanted to let go.
She wanted to drop the dome, to let the monster fly free, to let the world see what happened when power and pain collided. But she'd made her choice. No one made her do this. Not Cadmus, not the Joker, not Jervis. This was her fight.
Ace stood, hands shaking, jaw set. Her eyes burned with yellow-gold light, a color that had never been so wild and hot before, a color that matched the burning comet coming at her.
She shaped her thoughts like a blade, not a shield, and met Rebecca's eyes as the bat-girl crashed down on her.
There was a flash, not of light, but of something deeper like the things fhlashing through her bleeding mind, the memory, fear, hope, all tangled together.
For a split second, the world went so very, very silent.
Then everything exploded.
The impact sent a shockwave through the zoo. Glass shattered, earth buckled, trees snapped. The psychic dome trembled, then held, energy rippling outward like a bell. In the center of the crater, Ace and Rebecca lay sprawled, breathing hard, both girls small and human again, their clothes torn but whole, their faces streaked with blood and sweat and something gentler, like some type of a kind of exhausted peace.
Jervis landed hard, tumbling across the grass in a tangle of coat and hat, his laughter dying in his throat. He stared at Ace, wide-eyed, then at Rebecca, and for a moment, there was only the sound of their breathing, the distant wail of terrified animals, and the crackle of psychic energy fading into the afternoon air.
Ace smiled at Jervis, a real smile, soft and tired and grateful. "Told you I'd save you, old man." Her voice was barely a whisper, her body trembling with the effort of staying awake, of staying alive.
He crawled to her, clutching his hat, and for a crazy moment, he looked like he might cry. "You . . .oh, Ace, you beautiful child, you brilliant little queen of hearts . . .you did it. You did it." He stroked her hair with trembling hands, voice thick with something like love.
Rebecca rolled onto her side, groaning. Her limbs felt like jelly, her head pounding, but she was alive. She blinked, looking around as if surprised to find herself back in her own skin, back in the wreckage of the party. She caught Ace's eye, and for a moment, the two girls just looked at each other . . .
two survivors, two weapons, two lost children who'd made something good out of a lifetime of being used.
Kairo, peering down from the edge of the crater, watched it all with wide, disbelieving eyes. He'd gotten the twins to safety, he'd snapped a few adults out of their mindless trance, but he knew, deep down, that this was something different.
This was bigger than any one of them. This was what happened when kids were handed too much power and not enough love.
"Damn, Gramps was right . . . . . but, its not like I didn't already know that," Kairo said to himself before he started moving.
He climbed down into the crater, picking his way through splintered wood and scorched earth, and knelt beside Rebecca. "Hey," he said, voice soft, "you okay?"
She nodded, " . . . . .no . . . .," she said,
not fully trusting herself to speak much, if at all.
Ace coughed, then laughed, then coughed again. "Is it over?" she asked, not really expecting an answer.
Kairo looked at both of them, then at the ruined stage, then at the sky. "I think so. For now."
Penelope, still on Nimbus, hovered above the chaos, her blue dress streaked with dirt, her crown askew. She looked down at the crater and shouted, "That was the coolest thing I've ever seen!"
Addison and Alaric, pale but alive, stumbled to the edge, eyes wide, mouths open. Addison finally managed, "Can we go home now?"
Kairo grinned, even though he felt like crying. "Yeah, no. We have lots to do before we get to go home."
As the dust settled and the sirens wailed in the distance, the kids huddled together, some of them very battered and others close to being broken, survivors of a party that had spun wildly out of anyone's control. For now, at least, they were safe.
For now, they were just kids, breathing, wide-eyed and somehow alive.
And above them, the psychic dome shimmered, holding back the rest of the world, a last, defiant act of magic from a girl who'd never really had a chance to be a child.