[Every part of her ached. The nightmare had every overture of a homecoming, an extended visit, welcome back to hell etched into the longer than usual hours it lasted. And for a while, it was enough to forget about what was waiting outside the door. Flash knew, Flash had told Gwen, that was how Gwen knew. One of them had told Bruce, that was how Bruce knew. Why Bruce knew was a question she didn't have an answer to and one she wasn't looking for at the moment while hope still existed that maybe the rest of
that family didn't know.
Not hers, no, they hadn't been her family even when she had claimed them, not really. But the gray children still screamed at her in Damian's voice as they burned through the thin cotton of her hoodie and tank top to leave aching sores and the
Needler's still reminded her of one fast moving acrobat. Only thinking of them that way had distracted her enough to get caught in a group of them, with one long blade slicing from her shoulder blade to flank before she'd turned and broken open its skull with the ax she found.
It fucking hurt. Maybe it was a freaking welcome back gift because after that, the walls returned to dull gray, the nightmare eased, and with her own blood mixing into the stains of Silent hill, she started to dig herself out. A quick message to Gwen.
Nightmare ended. Looking for a way out now. Don't come. No reason anyone else needed to get trapped in here if it could be avoided. (And why anyone else would come was still beyond her. She wasn't the girl Luke went chasing after, or the one Flash had.)
The stairs out of the basement took longer than she expected they would, the cut along her back declaring itself loudly with every step and soaking through to her jeans. At the top, she stripped out of her hoodie and left it there, littering the ground, uncaring. Every door she came to, she checked. The stores, the apartments, no dice. At the Fens, she grabbed a new one, her hands shaking as she zipped it up to her throat. Her hair, stained with ash and gore from half a dozen monsters, a few strands singed from grasping children hung limply down her back. The door was needed sooner, rather than later, exhaustion and the steady leak of blood spurring her on. Out the door and then - somewhere she could get patched up.
No thoughts past than the immediate relief of symptoms. She lingered in the store for a moment, something teasing at the edges of her awareness. Another monster? She breathed in deep, held it, no sound. Nothing. Something else. Quiet as she could, she crept to the back of the store to the dressing rooms. She nudged the first door open. Nothing.
But the second door was the Right One, the jackpot, the Holy Grail, Goldilock's Just Right 'cause she shoved her shoulder into it and stumbled out into the hotel, biting back her howl as she fell onto her wounded side. An immediate curl and roll onto the side that wasn't laid open-]
Fuck.
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