Date: Unknown + 2
Mood: Exhausted
Music: Well, let's just omit this category, shall we? There won't be any for the foreseeable future, unless this ring has an mp3 player in it. Which it might...but if it does, I don't know how to use it.
I end up sleeping nearly eight hours, and only wake when I hear Barbara's frustrated curse from the main room. I stagger out, rubbing my eyes. "You were supposed to wake me," I admonish her. She's sitting at the computer, the cowl of her costume pulled back, and she jumps a little bit at the sound of my voice.
"Sorry - I got kind of wrapped up."
"Did you find anything?"
"Not much. It's been ten years since Moscow, according to the date on the computer."
"How does this place still have power?"
"Atomic battery. I had it installed after the No Man's Land business."
"Oh. Okay - anything else?"
She turns back to the computer and brings up a dozen blurry pictures. "It looks like most of the military's satellites have fallen into disrepair," she explains, "but I got a few lo-res pictures off one of the working ones. From what I can tell," she punches a key and the pictures sharpen, "most of the country looks like Gotham - nothing but ruins. Pretty much every city I can get a good picture of is levelled."
"Keystone?"
"I don't know - I can't get any of the satellites that are left to focus on it."
"Is that on purpose?"
"You mean, is someone hiding there? I don't know. I think it's just a hole in the satellite coverage, but there's no way to be sure."
My mind races - the roads will be covered in wrecked cars, of course, and the trains are out - we need this ring working if we're going to get to Keystone. "Barbara?" I begin tentatively, and she turns away from the computer. "Do you know how the Green Lanterns charged their rings?"
"Well, I only met Hal Jordan a few times...but I think he had a small lantern the Corps issued him. I think...why don't you ask your ring?"
"Ask..."
"Hal used to talk to his. So did Kyle."
"Kyle?"
"Doesn't matter. Try - just start your question with 'Ring,' so it knows you're addressing it."
I look at her and back at the ring, feeling more than a little ridiculous. "Ring...how do I recharge...uh, you?"
"Insert ring-bearing hand into your violet lantern and recite the oath of the Violet Lantern Corps." It replies in the same soft voice it spoke in yesterday. I decide to go out on a limb.
"Ring, where is my lantern?"
There's a silence, stretching out long enough to make me think I've broken the ring, before it replies. "Lantern located twelve kilometres west."
"What's twelve kilometres west?" Barbara wonders aloud, reaching for the computer. I interrupt her before she can start typing.
"My apartment," I say bemusedly. "It's in my apartment. Hey, hold on a second," I'm pretty much talking to myself at this point, but Barbara just patiently waits. "Ring - are there any other members of the Violet Lantern Corps on Earth?"
"Negative," comes the reply, too quickly for the ring to have done any sort of scan, "members of all Corps were forbidden to enter Sector 2814 by territorial edict 1."
Barbara starts violently. "What does that mean? Why would the Corps - and what does it mean, all Corps? How many are there? - be forbidden to come to Earth?"
"Ring - what is territorial edict 1?"
"Territorial edict 1 - agreed upon by all seven Corps at the conclusion of the Battle of 2814 - forbids any member of any Corps from entering Space Sector 2814 for any reason, to ensure that the so-called Plague of Earth is not spread throughout the galaxy. This edict is to be strictly enforced, particularly for the human members of all Corps, whose desire to return to their home planet cannot, for the universe's sake, be indulged."
That explanation is enough to silence both of us, and we exchange a wordless glance. Barbara's expression is, I'm sure, a mirror of my own, her eyes managing to be both blank and filled with terror all at once. Her mouth opens silently - once, twice, and a third time, before words find their way out, carried by a choked whisper. "What's the plague of earth?"
I stare at her, wondering how she expects me to know. She gestures at my hand, and it finally occurs to me that she wants me to ask the ring. "Ring," I whisper, "explain - what is the plague of earth?"
"Following the sudden and unexpected development of metahuman powers among a large percentage of Earth's population, a conflict between groups of the newly powered expanded beyond a battle for the planet and into a battle for the entire sector. Billions died in the ensuing conflict, which required all seven Corps to intervene to prevent the conflict from spreading any further. Lacking any knowledge of how the metahuman powers spread so quickly, the Corps decided to seal the sector to prevent any planetside contagion to spread. Hence territorial edict 1."
"Son of a bitch," Barbara hissed. "The juice - it must have...it mutated. Become airborne. Six billion people on Earth - the powers spread like a plague, and people weren't prepared for them. They all went to war with each other. That's what happened between the time that newspaper was published and now. That might be why Metropolis was empty - before the city was destroyed, everyone had left to wage war off-planet."
"But it couldn't have infected everyone," I declare with a confidence I don't feel. "There must be survivors."
"Very likely - but probably not many."
"Well, we have to find them!"
"And do what, Jessie? Whatever happened in the last ten years, we're far too late to do anything about it. Earth is cut off from the rest of the universe, and neither you nor I have the know-how or the resources to rebuild civilization."
"Then what? What do you suggest? Should we sit here quietly and wait to die? If Ivanovich sent us here, there must be a way for us to get back! We can't just give up!"
"I..." she staggers. As I open my mouth to ask what's wrong, something washes over me like a wave. My brain goes into hyperdrive as ten years worth of memories slam into place all at once. There's pain and joy and an incredible feeling of loss all warring with each other as I sink to my knees on the cold floor of the clock tower, struggling to process the influx of data. I'm vaguely aware of Barbara hitting the floor in a crumpled heap even as my overloaded mind gives out and I follow her down.
I regain consciousness in Barbara's arms. She's stroking my hair, and singing the same song that Mom used to...oh Goddess...Mom...I start to sob, and Barbara pulls me tight to her chest. "It's okay, Jessie," she whispers. "We'll find our way back home and none of this will have ever happened."
She sings quietly to me and waits for the tears to peter out before she helps me to my feet. With a gentle hand she wipes away the wet tracks on my cheeks. "I take it you just got the last ten years in a nutshell too?" she asks softly.
"Yeah," I murmur thickly. "But it doesn't...none of this makes sense. We weren't here - I still feel the same age as I was when we vanished - so how could we have lived the last ten years even though we disappeared and ended up here?"
Barbara thinks furiously. "It's like...it's like we were sent forward into the bodies of our future selves."
"But...we did disappear from Moscow, didn't we? I mean, there's that note from the Birds...but I remember Moscow! And everything that happened after that..."
"Yes...unless that's not when the note's from. It might have been - and I'm just guessing here - after the fall of Gotham. Do you remember? When we fled to Coast City? The Birds were missing then, so we couldn't even get in touch with them to let them know where we were going?"
I shake my head at her. "Don't do that."
"Don't do what?"
"Talk about things that haven't happened yet in the past tense. It's confusing."
She arches an eyebrow. "I don't know what tense to talk about them in - they're memories."
"I know, it's just...hell, never mind. I can't think of another way to talk about them either. Okay, say you're right - what would Ivanovich gain by sending us into our future selves? Obviously our confronting him didn't stop him, so why go to all the trouble?"
She paces restlessly back and forth. "Unless this isn't what his weapon was supposed to do. What if it was supposed to...I don't know...destroy our consciousnesses altogether, but instead it sent them here?"
"Okay...say that's true. What do we do now, then? If all of this has already happened, what can we do?"
"We can do what we were in Metropolis for in the first place. We were looking for a cure, remember? Something that could neutralise the Juice? If we find it - and we can somehow get back to where we're supposed to be - then we could stop all of this before it even starts."
I give her a sceptical look. "Even if we find a cure, how do you propose we get back? We don't even know how we got here."
"One step at a time, okay? Let's start with the cure."
"Fine. I need to charge my ring, though - " I lower my voice to a husky contralto (at least, that's the idea - it likely sounded more like a deranged muskox) "want to come over to my place?"
She smiles warmly at me. "Do you remember the first time you asked me to your apartment?"
"Yeah - I was terrified. Moscow had been such a debacle, and I was worried that you might be angry with me. So I went all out - cooked like a madwoman."
She's giggling now. "You remember the three bowls of pasta?"
"And the block of ice cream?" we're both laughing until we catch the other's eye and remember that we're talking about events that neither of us were technically there for. There's a long awkward silence, and then she gestures toward the door.
"After you, Violet." The pet name she'd given me five years ago makes me smile again. I make the same gesture.
"Age before beauty, Babs." She sticks her tongue out and walks out in front of me. It's an old joke that we've been doing for - damn it. Okay, it would be an old joke if we were really our present selves and not our past selves in the present...oh, forget it. This time-travelling business is a pain in the butt.
The apartment is still standing - it was destroyed when Gotham fell, but Babs and I rebuilt it to act as a sort of safehouse for ourselves and anything that we needed to hide. I remember leaving my lantern here now - it was before our last trip to the moon to salvage some parts from the Justice League's watchtower. Which I wasn't actually - okay, I'm going to stop getting bogged down in semantics now.
Barbara watches the front door as I pull the carpet up to reveal a safe hidden under a trap door. With practiced ease I spin the dials through the combination and open it up to reveal my lantern, glowing bright violet. She watches me intently, like she always does, as I stick my ring-bearing hand into the light. "Coming of loss," I recite the oath from memory, "fading not away, love's light shine bright as day. Let rings from rage and avarice born, beware my power...from pure love born!" I'm momentarily bathed in violet light, and as it fades my ring speaks. "Power levels one hundred percent."
"I love it when you do that," Barbara breathes in my ear. I turn and grin at her.
"You say that every time."
"It's true every timmmpph," her words are muffled as I press my lips firmly to hers. I feel a moment of astonishment that it still feels so incredible after all this time, and then her tongue probes gently between my open lips and coherent thought goes away for a while.
There's a sudden cold where her lips and tongue were and I realise she's reluctantly pulled away. "Come on, Violet - we should probably get going."
I close the safe and cover it back up before stepping out into the quiet Gotham evening with her. Down the street a wolf howls, and we're forcefully reminded of just how empty and devoid of human life this new world is. I hold Barbara tight and take to the sky, headed for Metropolis. There's not a single sign of life on our journey - until a shimmering wall of green energy appears in our path. "Crap," I whisper with a roll of my eyes.
"Relax," Barbara murmurs. "We knew this might happen at some point."
We turn in mid-air and I find myself face-to-face with Hal Jordan. The grey in his hair is born of age and stress this time, not Parallax, but the knowledge doesn't make him any less intimidating.
"Identify yourself," he demands.
"Jessie Montoya, Violet Lantern, Sector 2814."
"There are no Lanterns assigned to Sector 2814. Not anymore."
"Then what are you doing here?"
"You know why I'm here. You're in violation of Territorial Edict 1. The Guardians have sent me to bring you in."
"I don't answer to the Guardians - I'm not a Green Lantern."
"You're not going to answer to them - not them specifically, at least. You're being brought to an All-Corps tribunal."
"I'm sorry, Hal - I can't let you do that. We're working on a cure."
He laughs bitterly. "I think it might be a little late."
"No, it's not-"
"I have to bring you in, Jessie. Please don't make this any harder than it has to be."
As we've been talking we've been getting closer to Earth. I use the ring to carefully lower Barbara to the ground. When she's safely down I return my attention to Hal and we return to the sky. "Not going to happen. We have work to do."
"Then you don't leave me any choice."
There's more to tell, obviously, but I'm nearly out of paper. Stand by, museum guests, for a short intermission - much more to come!
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