The Beast padded barefoot through the ruined corridors of an abandoned tenement on the south edge of the Narrows, the floors groaning beneath his weight as he moved in a a almost primal way. Although his body was Nolan's his frame was hulking and splattered with drying blood, some of it his, most of it not. The ambiance of Gotham clung to him like a second skin, undisturbed by the occasional creak of broken boards or distant sirens. Moonlight cut through the cracks in the boarded-up windows, striping the room with silver.
He stepped over a collapsed chair and moved into what might have once been a living room. His breath was calm. Even. But he kept one hand pressed to his forehead, no pain, just… static. Something building behind the bone. He wasn't used to that. He wasn't used to them whispering. He tilted his head, fingers massaging his temple.
"Silence!" the beast growled but his wishes were not answered
He clicked his tongue not in fear nor doubt.
But annoyance.
The Beast crouched down by the busted wall, stretching like a cat, massive back rising and falling. Then he stopped moving entirely. Not asleep. Not relaxed. Just contemplating.
Then he heard voices right outside of his temporary residence and a smile stretched across his face.
The primal expression slipped from his face replaced by a almost intelligient gleam in his eyes, 'He will find a way to take control, I must make the most of this situation.' The beast analyzed quietly before his
***
Inside his mind, in the void of flickering light and endless dark.
Quentin paced with clenched fists, his boots echoing in the metaphysical space as if they stood on glass. "We can't overpower him. I don't care how clever you are, Kieran. He's not a puzzle we can outwit. Fucking bastard I tell ya."
Kieran sat on a low ledge of thought, his hands steepled, eyes darting. "He's not just brute force anymore. He's learning. Adapting. He let us scream and watched. He enjoyed it. God I forgot how much I hated this guy, tell us you have something Vey?"
Vey stood off to the side, arms crossed, eyes burning. "I'll fight him again. I don't care if I get ripped apart. I'll keep trying until I get the seat back."
"You'll get crushed," Quentin snapped. "We all will. He's not going to relinquish it. He owns the body right now. And he's got no intention of handing it back."
A moment of silence passed, heavier than the dark.
Then Kieran looked up slowly. "There is… one way."
Quentin's head turned. "No."
"He's right," Vey said, quietly this time. "There's only one person the Beast fears. Only one of us he won't kill."
They all turned toward the quiet figure in the distance. A man floating upright in the void, his arms slack at his sides, eyes shut, breath shallow but steady.
Nolan.
Kieran stood. "We need to wake him up. We need to pull him back. If he takes the seat, the Beast won't challenge it."
"But he's gone," Quentin said. "Checked out. Shut the door and bolted it behind him. You saw him during the last fracture that fucking Martian did a number on him."
"Then we make him come back," Vey growled. "Because if we don't, that thing out there is going to keep walking through this city like a goddamn plague."
The three of them stepped forward, toward Nolan's suspended form draped in light and shadow, floating like a memory.
Kieran reached first.
And called his name.
***
"Nolan—!"
Kieran's voice cracked like thunder in the void, echoing out into the blank expanse of Nolan's fractured psyche. Beside him, Vey stood with fists clenched, tendons taut, muscles twitching with restrained desperation. Quentin, tried to goad him into waking.
"Damn it, Nolan! You don't get to run! We need you!"
The floating figure stirred. Just barely.
Kieran stepped forward again, voice quieter. "I wish we talked to you earlier Nolan, but you just weren't ready. I'm sorry please wake up man."
Vey moved up next. "Time to wake up, boss."
They called over and over but Nolan remained unmoving.
***
Deeper in his own mind Nolan stood now, alone in an endless field of memories. Ghostly images flickered around him like static-laced film reels. Scenes of pain, loss, and regret, each more vivid than the last. The blood on his hands. The screams. The faces of those he couldn't save.
They weren't just memories. They were echoes saturated in sound and grief, pressing in on his skull like a stormcloud about to burst.
He reached out.
"Kieran?" he called.
Nothing.
"Vey? Quentin?"
They were faint now. Distant echoes through a blizzard of emotion.
"I can't—" he whispered. "I can't reach you…"
He tried to run. The memories scattered like leaves in the wind. But no matter how far he pushed, they expanded with him, curling up around his legs, choking the light from his lungs.
Then
silence.
The memories vanished. Like they'd never been there at all.
The white beneath his feet turned pale green, then shifting red, then cold sapphire blue. The ambiance seemed to turn comical.
And from the far corner of this new mental landscape a figure emerged.
A little girl.
Wearing mismatched socks. A child's pink tutu over torn jeans. A raincoat with one button and eyes too wide, too alert. She was chewing bubblegum or way that something else?
He honestly couldn't tell it was as if every time he got a clear image of her she would change again.
She giggled. "You're fun."
Nolan staggered back, confused. "Who—?"
She spun around in a slow circle, and her face changed old, young, a skull, a doll, something monstrous, something sweet. "You see in straight lines," she said, leaning closer, "but your head is all spirals."
He took a step forward, reaching for her. "What are you?"
"You asked the mirror the wrong question," she chirped, ignoring him. "You thought you were looking for answers, but what you really wanted was for someone to tell you it's okay to be a little mad."
"I don't understand."
"Nope!" she grinned, and before he could move—
She skipped toward him and it was as if everything around him slowed to a snails pace, she stood on her tiptoes, and booped him on the nose with her fingertip.
"Tag," she whispered.
The world exploded.
A flash of light tore through the air like a lightning bolt splitting the void in half.
****
Kieran gasped and staggered back as Nolan's body jolted forward in the mindscape.
Quentin grabbed him by the arm. "He's coming back he's here!"
Vey's voice was sharp. "Now! Take the goddamned seat!"