Chapter Text
Winter, 2019
California
It was true.
Their life really did flash before their eyes as they stared down at Korse’s disgusting smile and felt the barrel of his gun under their jaw.
They really did remember kicking rocks down the street alongside their brother and aunt when the sun was still white.
They really did remember clinging to their mother's chest as they cuddled up with her and their brother in the bomb shelter.
They really did remember the sickening roars of the explosions.
They really did remember when the soldiers in white came to rescue them and told their mother her husband had been found dead.
They didn't remember much of what happened between that and their mother sending them to S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W training.
They didn't remember much of becoming a crow.
But they did remember losing trust in everyone.
They did remember gaining trust in their brother again.
They remembered when they both realized they had to escape.
They remembered being smuggled out of the city by zoners who told them both to trust no one and have faith in everyone. It took them a few months to learn what that meant.
They remembered running around the desert with Kobra, looking for carbons and a place to stay the night.
They remembered learning the legends of The Phoenix Witch and Destroya.
They remembered crashing their motorcycle into the old Harley of a young man who introduced himself as Jet Star.
They remembered running into him at the same bar for nearly a year before they called each other friends.
They remembered being attacked by a short man in a Frankenstein mask when they first went to the diner before Jet told him they could be trusted.
They remembered laughing when the short man said his name was Fun Ghoul.
They remembered meeting Dr. Death Defying and his friends.
They remembered listening to The Mad Gear and Missile Kid.
They remembered stealing that Trans Am.
They remembered finding a little girl, alone in a run down mall, looking for her mom.
They remembered the first time the Girl smiled at them.
They remembered telling the Girl stories of life before the war. She wanted to celebrate Christmas with them all.
They knew Christmas would be soon.
They realized that they'd never get to celebrate Christmas with her.
They could hear Kobra screaming.
They saw light all around them.
They prayed the Girl made it out of there.
They didn't have time to scream or cry when they felt a searing pain shooting into their jaw— something was wrong, they'd been shot before, the pain always went deeper—
They saw a white tile floor—
Kobra was on the floor—
Pitch black, they couldn't breathe, they must have been dead—
The night sky as they sucked in a breath and someone picked them up—
Light reflecting through glass, where the hell were they—
Their throat hurt.
They opened their eyes and groaned. They were in a hotel room with monitors, bags, and tubes.
“Ah, you're awake."
They turned their head to the voice. They saw a dark skinned woman with purple hair in a white coat.
Doctor Robert, apparently named after an old song. Owner of the only hospital (which was a run down hotel she'd found) in zone one. Famous in the zones; to the city, unknown.
She smiled at them. “Party Poison."
They weakly smiled back. “Doct–"
They choked on the sound of their own voice.
“Save your voice, honey. Your vocal chords are fried,” Dr. Robert said. "You'll recover. But your voice will always sound a bit scratchy, sorry.”
They shrugged. They didn't care much about their voice sounding smooth, they were just happy to be alive.
Dr. Robert walked around the bed. Poison’s gaze followed her to Kobra, who was asleep on a couch on the opposite side of the room.
Dr. Robert shook him awake. He blinked a few times before he saw Poison, and immediately jumped and ran to their side.
“You're okay," he said. Poison could hear his voice shake.
They nodded. “Yeah," they whispered.
"Don't whisper,” Dr. Robert said. "Far worse for your voice than talking.”
Poison sighed.
"Can I hug you?” Kobra asked. He looked at the doctor. "Can I hug them?”
She nodded with a smile and Kobra wrapped his arms around Poison. They hugged him as tightly as they could.
They held each other longer than they ever had— longer than when they lost their dad, longer than the last time they saw their mom, longer than when Poison was arrested back in the city, longer than when they found each other again in the zones.
Of course they didn't want to let go, they'd both seen their brother fall dead to the floor.
When they pulled away from the hug, it occurred to Poison that they should both be dead. Unless Kobra had pretended to be dead (which he'd always been disturbingly good at, he could even stop his own heartbeat), but Poison had been shot in the head. They should have been dead.
Kobra had apparently been thinking the same thing. “We all pretended to be dust. I got shot in the leg and fell, and I decided to just stay on the floor. Apparently Ghoul and Jet did the same. We were all put in body bags, but Ghoul had a knife on him and he cut his open and let us all out.” He hesitated. "But you were… I mean, how'd you survive that?" Poison shrugged. Kobra continued. “Honestly, we pulled you out of the bag to get your mask.” His face flinched as something like sadness rippled across it. "But then you moved, and we're all like, ‘holy shit,’ so we ran to the car, and we brought you here, and Dr. Robert said you'd probably live but she was like ‘how the hell did they survive getting shot in the head?’ and–” he paused to catch his breath. He rarely talked so much so fast. “How the hell did you survive that?"
Poison thought back to that moment, the moment they thought was their last.
The pain. They'd been shot before— nowhere vital, of course, but even getting shot in the arm or leg every now and then hurt more than the pain they'd felt when Korse shot them.
It usually hurt far more, went much deeper, cut through skin and bone and shot through the body.
It should have felt like fire blazing through their skull and melting their brain, but it felt more like a skin deep burn, like they'd touched a hot pan.
Dr. Robert tapped their shoulder. They turned their head to see her holding out a notepad and pen. They took it and nodded gratefully.
Gun malfunction? they wrote.
“I guess it must've been," Kobra said. “Mom and Dad must be watching over you, or something.”
Poison smiled, then frowned.
"Well, Dad is, at least,” Kobra said quickly. "Mom– well– I don't know if she's even–" He hesitated. “But Dad is."
Poison nodded.
There was silence.
Then, Dr. Robert said to Kobra, “did you say you were shot in the leg?"
---
2018
Battery City, California
Most people in Battery City thought the S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W was only comprised of Exterminators, soldiers, and officers. They didn’t know about the other units. There was Technology Maintenance, who maintained and fixed BL/ind weapons (other technology was handled by BL/ind themselves). Then there was the Education Unit— quite simply, teachers. The Research and Information Unit was the least recognized or appreciated, but was perhaps the most important unit besides the Military Unit.
R&I was responsible for finding information on literally everything. There were various departments focusing on different forms of research and distribution of information, such as the Outer Zone Research Department.
The easiest job in this department was Information Distribution. This mostly consisted of marking statuses of both the zones as a whole, and of individual traitors and militia sent out to deal with said traitors, and then sending the information out to the City Distribution Unit. Tasks were often tedious or frustrating, and many people with this job disliked it.
However, there was one S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W Information Distributor who quite liked her position.
For one, she was very proud to be serving her City, the City that had saved them all. Battery City had given her everything, and she was willing to give it everything.
Plus, she never cared for her life before the Wars. Because of this, she had forgotten it almost completely, but sometimes she remembered—
She had forgotten it almost completely, and much of what she did remember, she disliked. Before there were pills, there were dangerous feelings that caused people to act out of line and hurt themselves or each other. Before there were restrictions, there were freedoms that allowed people to make harmful choices. Before she had this job, she was working in tech, which she hated.
She had never wanted to become a technician. She’d wanted to be an artist, actually, but that wouldn’t have been very useful. Still, being a technician was unbearable. She hated working with wires and mainframes— she found it quite tedious. She knew lots about most forms of technology, but she barely used that knowledge outside of her job, and most people assumed her to be snobby about her intellect. She barely made friends in work, with the exception of her husband, but he was long dead. She hated it, and only went into it because her father had been a technician himself.
She enjoyed her job working for the S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W much more.
She actually got many benefits from this job.
She was paid very well, she had a full retirement plan, and her healthcare was paid for.
Because working with the S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W sometimes required people to do things they couldn’t under the City’s laws, she was granted certain rights that ordinary citizens were not, though she hardly exercised them.
And though she knew that citizens barely appreciated her work, she also knew that she was highly respected within S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W itself. Higher-ups often went out of their way to show her and her coworkers how appreciated they were. She’d met many important people and been invited to work dinners for important people. She’d even seen Agent Korse at one of them. Had her son been there, he’d have lost his mind; he’d worshipped Korse, back before—
She’d never cared much for the man herself; she’d heard that he had severe anger issues that even pills didn’t quell and that he abused his power often. However, she did understand that he was perhaps the most important and successful Top Exterminator there was. Without him, Battery City wouldn’t be nearly as safe as it was. So she appreciated him, just as she appreciated the entire City. It had given her everything.
She liked her job. She was perfectly happy to clock in every morning at nine o’clock and clock out every evening at eight o’clock. She was perfectly happy to wake up every day and brush her teeth and put on her uniform every day and do the same thing at work every day and go home every night and prepare dinner and go to sleep at nine o’clock every night and wake up the next morning and do it all again.
There was comfort in monotony.
It was comfortable, and it was safe.
She was safe.
She didn’t need anything from her old life. She didn’t need to miss anything.
She didn’t miss anything.
She shouldn’t have missed anything.
She shouldn’t have missed her children.
They wouldn’t be any less dead if she did miss them.
So she didn’t miss them. No, she didn’t miss them. She didn’t miss them.
Instead, she found herself, every day at her desk, marking off the statuses of traitors.
Alive. Dead. Dead. Unknown. Alive.
The same thing every day. It was safe. She was safe. She didn’t need or want anything else. She didn’t miss anything. She didn’t miss her sons.