Young Writers Society

Bo walked in, standing up straight again as she started to open up. He was surprised at how quickly she did, but glad she felt safe enough to.

“I do remember hearing about you guys and the court case. It sounded really dicey... but as for wondering why it was us who were brought here, I can’t really say. All we know is that the captain knows enough about all of us to know we’ve done bad, regrettable things, but he seems to believe we’re all capable of change. Otherwise, I don’t think he would’ve brought us here. I mean, he did say it was a second chance.”

He walked over and sat down beside her, giving her a little bit of space.

“Of course, my personal opinion is that powerful beings the likes of him ought to keep their meddling hands out of other people’s lives. Regardless of his reasons, I don’t think they’re justified. The moment people try to play God I think they’ve crossed a line...”

Bo stared out into the room before he broke into a sad sort of smile, scoffing at himself. He looked down in his lap, beginning to talk a little with his hands.

“I mean, I know that sounds rich coming from a guy who’s a former hitman. But I’ve really tried to change since then, and I’m not like, tooting my own horn. Don’t get me wrong, I’m aware I’ve still got issues spilling out my sides, but I’m trying. Sincerely trying, and I think that’s at least a step in the right direction.”

He looked up at Alex. “All that to say, is I do think you’re capable of change too. I mean, sometimes the hardest part is accepting that we need to, but if you really are willing to commit yourself to that, it’s not as hopeless as it seems.”

As he talked to her, he noticed she’d stopped crying, which he decided to take as a good sign. But the way she’d begun to look at him as he was talking was... strange. He did that sort of weak laugh, where it’s really more just a huff through your nose in a quiet attempt to alleviate the awkwardness of being stared at intently.

“...Is there something on my face?”

Alex thought about what Bo said. He knew about her and still he stayed. He wanted to get to really know her. He'd come back for her. Made sure she was all right. And now, he saw her. Really saw her.

It's not as hopeless as it seems.

And he wasn't bad looking either.

She kissed him. But something was wrong. He wasn't kissing back. Not in the slightest.

Suddenly, Alex's face turned hot.

Bo had not seen that coming, but the moment it did he felt like he probably should’ve. He leaned back and away from the kiss and pushed her away firmly at her shoulders, trying to figure out where he went wrong. His mind was reeling. His face was burning. His heart was racing.

He was nervous.

“Woah, woah, woah, woah,” was all that came out initially in a slurred string of surprise as he held Alex at a distance. He let go, but still kept his hands held up between them. He began to scoot back away from her a little.

“Alex, I’m so sorry if there was a misunderstanding. When-when I said I was coming to give a listening ear and talk things out that’s really all I meant. No hidden motives or strings attached. I-I mean the last thing I’d want is for you to feel like I was taking advantage of us all being in a crazy situation and being vulnerable. And like, on top of all that, I just don’t think - like uh -that- this is going to be helpful right now.”

Alex stood up and backed off.

Her face was flushed with anger. Of course, it was so absurd that anyone would want to actually be with her. Everything that Bo actually said went in one ear and out the other.

"I'm a nice person, you know," she said, showing Bo the door. When he didn't move, she screamed. "Out!"

She slammed the door behind him as he left. Once he was gone, she buried her face into her pillow and cried. How could she have been such an idiot?

Megara flipped open the book and choose a poem to teach Kirux. It was one of Eddie's favorites, one that rhymed all the way through. The actual meaning was about the bouncy kind of joy in life. If it was roughly translated, it could either be about joy or sadness, in reality, but Megara preferred the happier meaning for Kirux.

She taught him how to pronounce the first line.



Winter did not know what a car accident was, but she could hear Tim's anger and grief. She did not know why he blamed himself, though. Accidents did not happen on purpose.

She watched him for a long moment. She did not know what to say to calm him, but she wanted to say something. He did not deserve to be blaming himself for accidents. Just like Winter was not at fault for the death of Summer.

"Did you want her dead?" she asked finally. There was so much more she could ask, say, make him understand. He did not deserve the torture of his own mind along with whatever all of this was supposed to accomplish.

Bo stood frozen outside the door for what felt like a very long time but was only under a minute, staring blankly out into the hall.

That had not gone well.

He looked around the hall, knowing none of the others could’ve been around to hear it, but still wondering. He slowly started to walk down the hall, unsure of where to go next.

Part of him wondered if he should go back and see the others, but he’d already told them he would see them in the morning, and he didn’t want to trip into having to explain what just happened. Not now. Not right now.

His head was spinning as he stopped in front of his door.

A. Petrov. Andrei - a name no one but his grandparents had called him and that his dad called him when he was in trouble. Maybe it was right that it was what was on his door. Because he was in all kinds of trouble.

He opened the door and locked it behind him, pausing to look around the empty room before marching right up to his bed and plopping face-down into it.

Everything was overwhelming, and he just wanted to be home. He missed the days when things were simple - when he didn’t know about other worlds and wasn’t kidnapped by higher beings. He missed the days when he was a nobody on earth with a checkered past and a few good friends who actually knew and cared about him. He missed the days when he could go to work and come home and go to sleep without having nightmares of going blind, or losing a loved one, or never being able to return home again.

But now he was living one of those nightmares, and it was real, and he didn’t know what would be enough to satiate the being that brought them on this hell ship. He didn’t even know if it was telling the truth, or if it was just saying that to mess with them.

What if it never ended? What if he never got back home? What if he was trapped here, forever, with a bunch of strangers and clones of famous people?

Bo grabbed a pillow and shoved his face in it and finally allowed himself to cry, but he forced himself not to make a sound loud enough to escape the pillow.

Kirux wished he could copy what Megara was saying, but he could at least listen to her say it! He gave a big nod after she told him how to pronounce it. He had no way of knowing the reason for why she was teaching him, but her attempts were far from in vain - it was just the distraction he needed. The tears stopped falling, and his cheeks finally began to dry.


He looked up at her.

"Of course not," he said. The anger was still there, but it was receding. Something else was taking its place - a cold, emotionless detachment from this conversation and this situation. "But she's still dead, and her death is still on my hands."

He got up.

He wasn't going to sit here anymore. He had discovered the captain's scheme, and he had other, better things to do. Jason and Ian both needed to be analyzed more, Gotham needed patrolling, and he needed to update James on how far they had strayed from the plot.

He left the reading room.

He left that floor of the ship.

He made his way to the room that had been given to him - titled T. Drake instead of the name he had before as a final insult - and quietly slipped inside. He was an imposter, obsessive, selfish, paranoid, and a horrible, horrible person, but he didn't really care right now. Because it was very unwise to get underneath the skin of someone who could hack, wield a bo staff, and outsmart criminals on a daily basis. And what was the captain but just another villain for him to fight?

The room, unsurprisingly, lacked most of what he'd keep on him. He didn't even have the dignity of a batarang, or one of his training staffs. But that was fine. He had more years of martial arts training than the original Tim ever did.

It wasn't hard to find where the captain's quarters were. He wasn't sure what to expect what he stepped inside, but he knew that they'd be relatively important. The captain wasn't really a captain, and this ship was just a show. But he seemed very dedicated to his role, and Tim suspected that anything important he might have would be stashed somewhere inside.

He opened the door.

Sarah wondered exactly why she was here. She hadn't killed anyone. And goodness she wasn't perfect but she always tried to be a good person. Of course, there was Susan. Sweet, precious Susan.

When she was born, it seemed like there was hope that things would turn out okay. Two years wasn't nearly enough time to matter to anyone outside of her family. They'd been through so much together, her and Jay and Adam. And once Susan died, it seemed everything else had fallen apart.

Her father's heart attack. Jay getting caught for the check fraud.

Still, she hadn't done anything wrong.

"I'm going to bed," she announced. "Goodnight."

**

The first day was in the books. Privately, the Captain wondered how long he would have to be here. The passengers were dense, certainly, each in their own ways, but he wondered if there was any getting through to them.

He was happy to have a space away from them. He'd liked some of the pictures of first class cabins he'd seen on the Titanic. He hadn't intended to be daft by modeling this ship after that, but considering it was the only ship most of them knew, it was what made the most sense. And anything to keep them on their toes.

He looked at the mirror in his room and saw Brad Pitt. Certainly one of the more handsome of human actors, and if he had to be stuck in human form form for now, he could at least look like that. Of course, the passengers would all see something different. Someone from their own pasts.

Just then, he heard a noise. He saw Tim. Of course, his name wasn't really Tim. That was his big secret.

"What are you doing here?" The Captain asked. "You're not supposed to be here."

"Night night!" Kirux signed, looking up when he heard Sarah's voice. The grin on his face faded when he realized how upset and worried she seemed. Tim had seemed upset, too. He definitely had to make sure they were feeling okay later.

That was when he realized just how sleepy he was. Giving a little stretch, he signed to Megara, "I need to go to bed now. Night night, Megara!"

He gave her a big, warm hug and went off towards his room.


Getting caught had never been part of the plan, but Tim could roll with the change. There were always a few times where the villains did something that wasn't mentioned in the comics. He had adapted then, and he could adapt now.

Tim gave him a smile.

He was nervous. Of course he was. The Captain, even while looking like Percy Jackson, had a decent height advantage. He was the one in control of the situation. But Tim had learned a lot about how people like the Captain thought, and he knew that a little bit confidence could go a long way.

"You're not supposed to be kidnapping people," he said. He was scanning the room now, out of the corner of his eye. If he was lucky, there would be something he could use in the place of his bo staff. "But here I am."

He couldn't find anything.

He crossed his arms. "Besides," he said, "you already know the answer. You kidnapped a Robin. Did you really think Batman's sidekick wouldn't try figuring out a way to get home that didn't involve playing your game?"

The Captain laughed ruefully. While he wasn't intimidated by him. Maybe it was time to change forms as Percy Jackson obviously wasn't. But to what? Of course. There was the girl. What was her name? Lila. Yes, that was it.

He knew his transformation was successful because he watched the look on Tim's face fade.

"Jack," he said. "I'm afraid I can't let you leave."

For a moment, all he did was stare.

The confident expression on his face faded, and his arms fell to his side. He was grappling with the realization that this was the first time he had seen Lila's face since the accident - and the first time he had heard anyone else mutter his name. Memories flashed through his mind: childhood escapades, nights under the stars, and all of the little moments he had taken for granted.

And then, at last, he thought of the accident.

He knew that the person before him had to know everything about him. About who Lila was, and why hearing her utter that name was so heartbreaking.

The first noise that left his lips was a laugh.

A broken, little laugh.

"This isn't fair," he whispered. "I didn't deserve this. I've done everything right. I've played my part in a game bigger than yours, and yet-yet here I am, having to act like I don't know exactly what you're doing."

Another broken laugh left him.

But instead of lingering back like before, he took a step in the captain's direction.

He tried to imagine that he wasn't looking at Lila's face.

(It was too hard to.)

"You can call me selfish," he said. "You can call me a horrible, horrible person. I really don't care. In the scheme of things, I don't even care for the little show you're putting on! But don't you f****** dare wear her face and pretend that what you're doing right now is alright. She could be dead, and you're running around wearing her face. I might be selfish, but you're just the pot calling the kettle black."

Megara stayed there and kept reading for a while. She didn't want to go back to that room. Tailor. It wasn't her name. She knew it wasn't her name. Why did the ship - the captain - think it was even remotely okay to put that on her door. As though she didn't have enough problems with her family as it was. She didn't need the family she shared blood with adding to that, especially when the only thing she knew about them was just that, their blood was in her veins. And, now, their name, she supposed.

It was a cruel joke.

If the captain wanted her to realize that she was a bad person, it had succeeded. If the goal was for her to do something about it, after that stunt, she was more likely to call upon some of her old games to play with the captain.

Megara never thought she'd miss her sister, but Briar's uncanny ability to make death slow and painful would be rather useful here.

xXx

Winter left around the time the others started to, but she didn't go to bed. No, she wasn't tired.

Instead, she wandered around. There were so many wonderful things on the ship. It was a shame the captain was a liar. Otherwise, this place might have been quite fun.

She dragged her fingers absently along the walls, leaving little trails of frost where the heat had been pulled away. perhaps there was another magic mirror show to watch or some other strange feature of the ship to observe. Someone had once said that saltwater did not freeze easily, and she wondered if that was true. She could go above deck and dive into the water, just to see.

Ahead of her, she saw an open door, heard a voice. It sounded like Tim, the one who had been so upset about the captain's words. The captain's lies, she knew, but maybe Tim still thought that he was at fault for an accident. Even though, by their nature, accidents weren't anyone's fault.

She approached the door curiously and pushed it the rest of the way open, observing the scene before her. The captain stood there in front of Tim, who was very, very upset.

"Hello," she said, looking around the room, before her eyes circled back around to the captain, "Why is Tim upset?"

Somewhere between crying and stifling his sobs Bo had fallen asleep, face-down in the pillow, flat on his stomach. As he woke up he slowly began to feel the ache of his spine, and the tenseness of his arms from hugging the pillow like a snake, apparently.

He groaned as he stretched out on the bed and flopped up. He could hear his back and neck pop, and he wasn't sure if they were good or bad ones.

Disappointment and dread sat in his gut as he looked around the room. He was still on the ship. It hadn't been a dream, and he hadn't gotten to go home.

He didn't really want to get up and move about the ship. Even one glance out one of the windows made him woozy, and that on top of not-being-fully-awake yet was not helping his already cloudy head.

Everything from the day before played over in his head as he slid off the bed, stretching and cracking his neck again with a grunt. He sighed. One day of sleeping without proper neck support and he felt like he'd been hit by a truck. Fantastic. All the stress probably wasn't helping either.

Bo wandered to the door, not bothering to change out of his sweats and t-shirt from yesterday as he stepped into the hall barefoot. It didn't look like anyone was awake yet. Or, they'd already left to explore the ship. It wasn't like he could really tell what time it was, besides daytime.

He decided to wait on waking Alex and started with Kirux's door, knocking to see if there was any response.

There were two of them now. And when morning came, the rest of the group would inevitably wonder where these two were. And then all of them could come to his quarters. They were ruining everything with their impatience. But maybe, now that he thought about it, maybe the best way was to keep them here.

He led Winter into the cage where he kept Tim. It was spacious and they had comfortable mattresses to sleep on. He wasn't a complete monster, after all.

"Let's see how long it takes for your friends to realize that you're gone," he told them. "Need anything to eat?"

His stomach growled, but he ignored it.

He would find a way out of here. It didn't matter that he was trapped now. He was a Robin. He had dealt with dangerous situations like this, and had read about them for years. He tried not to worry about how different this was than what he was used to, and tried not to focus on how much the captain looked like Lila now.

"I'm not hungry," he said.

His stomach growled again.

Tim stood beside the very edge of the cage, looking out at the captain with a cold, hard expression. He might have only looked like a fourteen year old, but the expression belonged to someone much older.


Kirux was having a really nice dream when he heard a knocking on his door. The noise really scared him - he shot up with a start, hugging Klein close to his chest. Then he realized it was just someone knocking, so all of his fear slipped away.

He hurried to his feet. He knew it was important to get changed, but he didn't want them to wait long. He darted over to the door, knocked back, and then rushed to get an outfit out from his closet.

Now wearing an outfit that looked a lot like his favorite outfit - a black coat, black shirt, black pants, black boots and the cloth that covered his mouth, Kirux returned to the door and flung it open.

He grinned.

It was Andrei!

Even though he was kind of scary when he first saw him, he really was happy to see he was the one knocking. He signed "Good morning!" before throwing his arms around him.