Young Writers Society

"His name is Les," Jason offered, a smile stretching from one ear to the other at the realization that Eddie had named his toy after him. "Where's Megara right now? Les and I haven't seen her yet."


"Yes?" Runi hesitantly replied as Megara dragged her out into the hallway. "He looks just like you, and he was actually looking for you - Jason and I ran into him at the festival, and then we had to tell him you died. But you're not dead now, so at least he doesn't have to deal with that anymore."

She faltered just in time to hit her head on the doorway - she forgot how tall Cornyx was.

"Ouch," she hissed, rubbing the top of her head.

Then she paused, thought for a moment, and spoke her again.

"He, uh, doesn't know our actual names," she admitted. "Jason couldn't say his name in case your family knew it, and I couldn't say my name because I'm a guy now sooo..."

She gestured down at herself. "I was going by Darian, like I told you in the hallway, and he was going by the name Ben Wayne."

Eddie hesitated, "Meggie told me not to tell," he said, hugging his stuffed animal a little tighter, "but you're friends, and Meggie likes friends." He paused, frowning as he thought really hard about it.

"Meggie went home," he said finally, "She's got pretty fire hair now."



Megara paused briefly when Runi hit her head to make sure she was okay. She seemed fine, so Megara kept going. There wasn't time to stop right now. Jason wasn't likely to refrain from using force if he found a random teen in Megara's old place.

"Okay..." Megara processed it all. She would deal with the brother thing later. There was way too much going on right now to worry about that. "Okay, so, I-I can explain the grave thing later. I don't want to explain it twice. So you're Darian and Jason's Ben?"

Jason stiffened.

It took him only a second to realize that Eddie was talking about where Megara lived, and another second to realize that Runi had no way of knowing Megara was alive. And while that was bad enough, Megara wouldn't be able to recognize Runi - she didn't look anything like she did before she used the potion.

"I can't wait to see it," Jason said, giving Eddie one last smile before standing up again. He glanced over at Les. Even without Megara there to scold him, Jason knew that Megara being alive made Les being here very bad - Megara was still using it as a base, and he had just brought a stranger in.


She nodded.

"Yup," she confirmed. "Although we'll probably just use our actual names once we met up again. We weren't planning on doing more than just talking with Les, but then he mentioned that he was looking for his sister, and you look like you're related, so..."

She gave a sigh and rubbed the back of her neck.

Les was very, very confused.

As Eddie grinned and chirped, "It's really pretty!" Les was still processing the whole 'Meg's still alive' thing. Why did she have a grave if she wasn't dead? Had her friends been mistaken? How was that possible?

Even with all of his questioned swirling and multiplying in his head, he couldn't deny that he was excited. He was going to get to meet her! His sister! The one his parents couldn't keep. All of his questions that had built up for so long would be answered, and he could take her home to meet their parents. Mother would love to see her again!

xXx

Megara shook her head, still processing, and led the way through several back streets and alleys to cut through the city faster and make it to the woods. It felt nice to be able to run again, to move freely. The lack of feeling from her knee down had taken so long to get used to, though.

A few minutes later, Megara pushed aside some vines that blocked the way into her hideout and slipped inside.

"Jason," she said the moment she rounded the corner, murder in her eyes, "You are so fucking dead."

Relief flooded Jason the moment Megara arrived. Runi had come in right after her; both of them looked unscathed. Whatever happened in the manor hadn't involved a fight, and Jason could at least be happy about that.

...Even if Megara was mad at him.

"I already am," he quietly said.

He bit his lip, nervously rubbed his wrists, and took a step towards her. "I'm sorry-"

"Is that Eddie?" Runi asked, comically peeking around Megara. She could have just looked around her; she easily towered over her right now, and even when she didn't look like him. Runi turned back to her. "Important question that I just thought of: is Eddie like a brother or a son to you? I just realized I didn't know, and it's really important that I know."

Eddie ran forward and threw his arms around Megara in a hug, "Meggie! Meggie, Jay-Jay's here! He doesn't look like Jay-Jay though. And your brother wanted to see you," he pointed at Les, "See! He's just like you!"

Megara would deal with the brother thing in a moment. For now, she was blinking at Runi, "Um..." she shook her head, "We can talk about that later." There was too much going on right now. She reached out mentally to the blonde boy - her brother, apparently - and felt what he was feeling. Excitement, confusion, a lot of confusion, actually, and surprise.

She shook her head again and drew back so she was only feeling her own emotions. Unfortunately, her own emotions were a mess right now. She was hardly less confused than blondie over there.

She knelt down and looked Eddie in the eye, "Hey, could you go to your room for a bit? I'm going to talk to the others about boring stuff for a little while."

He nodded and trotted off, leaving the older bunch to talk about what was going on.

She focused on the not-dead thing first, "So, fancy seeing you all. In my house." She glared at Jason, then returned with a ticked-off smile, "Now, I'm sure you've got your questions, so, one at a time, ask them. I have things to do today."

She was surprised to discover that she really was mad at them. This was her home, her secret, her only safe place. Now there was a stranger here and the one day this year she'd be able to walk completely unbothered through the halls of her old family manor was wasted on whatever the hell these people wanted from her. Sure, she was happy to see her friends, but she wasn't overjoyed to see them here and now, without warning with a stranger.

Jason and Runi exchanged a look. Jason wanted to apologize more, but it was clear that he wouldn't be able to in the near future - it was time to ask questions. Jason didn't have that many questions; he had, after all, come back to life, too. And he lived in Gotham. Fake deaths really weren't anything new.

Les probably had some questions, too. He knew close to nothing about his sister. What they had told him about her, paired with her actually being alive and not dead, probably gave him his fair share of concerns.

Runi awkwardly raised her hand like they were in a classroom and not Megara's secret home and base. "I mean, I'd really like to know the answer to the question I just asked," she said. "It's really important. Is Eddie like a brother or a son to you?"

Megara stared at her. Runi had asked twice now about Eddie, and Megara couldn't fathom why. Eddie was just...Eddie.

She shook her head, "I don't have an answer for that, Runi," she said, still sounding slightly irritated, "It doesn't really matter. Anything else?"

The blond boy was staring at her with his mouth agape, beholding her like she was some celebrity he'd only just gotten to meet.

"What?" she snapped at him.

He blinked, apparently realizing she could see him too. "I-I didn't expect you to have red hair."

She stared at him, then rolled her eyes, "It's fake, genius. I assume you're that long-lost brother Runi was telling me about?"

"Uh, Les." He extended his hand but she didn't take it. She was fully aware that she was acting unreasonable, that she was being cold and irritable when she didn't have to, but she didn't much care. They were in her house, wasting her day, potentially even risking Eddie and her lives if any of them were seen going into the woods by anyone who would like to know why.

Les put his hand down after an awkward moment and shifted with the remnants of that awkwardness. "I, uh, I didn't mean to meet you...like this," he said after a moment. The silence got to him, Megara assumed.

"I'm sure you didn't," she said.

Another pause to wriggle under the boy's skin. He wasn't very good at keeping his composure.

"Do...What do you do for fun?" he asked, no doubt a question he'd been planning to ask for about as long as he'd been looking for her, however long that was.

"Nothing. Any other questions to waste my time with or are you about ready to leave?"

He cringed and she knew by the look in his eye that Jason had said something. He knew something about her life, her career, that no one was meant to know.

Megara turned her heated glare on Jason, "Jason," she said, her voice stiff with anger, "What did you tell him?"

Runi was admittedly put out at the answer. She didn't think she could have explained the reason why she needed to know so badly - especially when they weren't even a thing - but she wanted to know if she was supposed to treat him like a little brother or a son. It was an important distinction.

Then she heard the anger in Megara's tone, and she turned back to the conversation.

Jason took a deep breath.

"I told him the truth," he admitted. "We thought you were dead. I wouldn't have shared it if I even thought that you might be alive, but we saw your graves. We knew you did dangerous things. And when we saw Les at the festival, we couldn't just leave after telling him that the sister he was looking for was dead."

Megara's glare burned into him.

He saw a grave and assumed she was dead, forgetting that he had a similar grave for himself in his own fucking backyard. A name on a piece of rock didn't mean a godsdamned thing and he knew it.

"The truth," she echoed, her voice amused, her eyes ready to tear his eyes from his skull, "You told a stranger who happened to look a little bit like me the truth even after he told you he was looking for me?"

As if he didn't know that someone asking about her was never a positive thing. As if he didn't know she didn't have friends here.

"I-"

"Shut your trap or I swear to the gods you will regret the day you were born," Megara cut her supposed brother off. He could say whatever he wanted to the trees once she was gone. She was leaving this city. Tonight, if she could get everyone out of here by then. She'd go into the hills with Eddie. She couldn't let Caedis know she was still around. Still alive and ready to take them apart. Les couldn't be trusted not to lead anyone here, or not to let anyone know she was alive.

So she would leave. Let him rant and rave in the streets about her being alive. So long as she destroyed the evidence of that, he'd be dismissed as crazy.

Neither Jason or Runi said anything for the minute that followed.

Runi felt like she was betraying Megara by stepping forward and going to Les, but she knew that Les needed her a little more right now. Les had been excited about being seeing a long lost sibling. Maybe Runi had been projecting a little too much - she never had a family, and she would have loved to have her own Les show up on her doorstep without warning.

She took a deep breath, her mouth and throat dry.

"...He doesn't just look a little like you," she quietly said. "I saw the resemblance even before I got close enough to talk with him."

Beside her, Jason dug his fingernails into the palms of his hands.

She heard him take a deep breath similar to her own, even though it sounded like he was a lot closer to crying than she was at this moment. "I know this...this sounds stupid coming from someone who died and came back to life," Jason said, "but this is my body, Megara. The technology that brought me here was supposed to bring me to you. It doesn't get tricked by a name on a headstone. I-I don't know how you're alive, but I know your body is underneath the ground there."

He took another deep breath.

"So I thought it was alright to share the truth," he said. "I...I didn't want it to be true. And I know there's ways for people to come back from the dead. But your world doesn't have those ways, and..."

He faltered.

Runi somehow found her voice again.

"I don't know a lot about your world," she quietly admitted. "I...I don't know a lot about you. I didn't even know about Eddie until Jason told me. But...But I was in a similar situation. The person who helped me get here is one of the best spell-casters around. The spell was supposed to bring me right to you, and it wasn't supposed to bring me to a grave, either. So I...I really thought you were dead."

She gave a small smile.

"I know I come across as naive a lot of the times," she said. "And I know the whole genocidal dictator as a best friend thing doesn't say a lot for me being able to judge character. But I'm good at judging people, Megara. And even if you want to hate Les and hate us for bringing him into this, I know he's a good person. I...I can feel it. He just wanted to meet his sister. To...To have a...family..."

She glanced away.

Megara stared at her. She wanted to agree with Runi. She wanted to apologize, if only to make Runi feel better.

But she couldn't.

False apologies were worse than none at all.

"All of you need to leave," she said, her voice soft but boiling with anger, "If anyone in that gods-damned city finds out that I'm alive, all of you will have hell to pay, got it?" she looked pointedly at Les.

The boy swallowed hard and nodded, looking like he was about to cry.

Runi didn't know how she was feeling.

She felt mortified at getting on Megara's bad side. She felt a little bit scared, too - she knew Megara would never hurt her, but the tone was all too familiar to Runi's ears. She felt guilt at making such a stupid choice, even when the choice made so much sense at the time.

And she felt surprised when she realized she was feeling a little angry, too.

She didn't say anything. She just bridged the little distance left between Les and her, threw her arm awkwardly around him - Cornyx was way taller than Les was - and started to gently guide him out of the place. She was grateful that she had a handkerchief on her from when she accidentally turned into Cornyx; she was able to offer to him as they left.

Jason didn't meet Megara's eyes before he left. He just ducked his head down, fiddled with his wrists for reasons Runi couldn't understand, and quietly said, "Tell...Tell Eddie I said bye..."

And then he was gone with Runi and Les, leaving Megara behind in the emptiness of her home.

Megara didn't watch them go. She stood still and let them pass her. If she moved, if she breathed another word, she would break. And she couldn't break. Not in front of them. For Eddie, and Eddie's safety, she couldn't let them stay.

It was a while after they left, a minute or two, when she sank to her knees. She didn't notice the tears until she couldn't see through them, didn't know she was sobbing until she was gasping for breath. She hardly noticed Eddie trot up to her, confused and concerned, until his questions finally registered.

"Where are they? Why didn't Jay-Jay say goodbye?"

The questions had been asked beats apart, but Megara realized what they were at the same time.

"They had to go," she managed. She felt for his emotions. Confusion, a twinge of disappointment, sadness. At least he wasn't overwhelmed.

xXx

Les started crying almost as soon as they were out of the cave. It took him a little while to form words, but when he did, he said, "Is-is she always...I didn't expect...why..." He dissolved into more tears.

Runi wasn't sure what to say.

She didn't know Megara as well as she thought did. That much was clear. And while Runi loved Megara very, very much, love wasn't something she was blindly loyal to. If she had been, she would have never been able to leave Grimmore and Nissam for good.

"I think she was startled," Jason said. He was fiddling with his wrists again, anxiously grabbing at them and almost methodically rubbing one wrist before switching to the other. "That...That has to be it. We went into her safe spot, and if she didn't try to correct her death, it was because she needed to be...to be..."

He faltered.

"Whatever the reason is," Runi said, "I think she made a mistake. She-She should have trusted us and our judgement. Jason, you're her friend. And I'm...I'm..."

She shook her head.

"I don't know what I was to her, but I guess I'm not that now."

She looked over at Les and gave him a smile that easily met her eyes. She knew they were tearing up a little, and she knew the smile must have looked downright ominous on Cornyx's face, but she had to try to comfort him if she could.

"Les, you're a great, good person," Runi promised. "She's an idiot if she can't see that, and she's an idiot if she thinks that's a good way to treat you."

It hurt saying something like that about someone that she loved, but how was she supposed to even begin to pretend that Megara was perfect when she had seen how she treated the three of them - and, more importantly, how she treated the family that had clearly been looking for her for a very long time?