Kazimir balled his hands into fists at his sides, opening and clenching them again. If the shadow was a god, he'd had the power to bring them here, so how pathetic could he be? That, and bullets didn't touch him. Charlie was brave, and Kazimir liked his gusto to jab at the shadow, but Charlie had also died young. He didn't deserve to die again.
But then there was also Jay, who kept getting on his nerves. Kazimir turned to him.
"You better give a damn about what we think about you," he said, staring. "'Cause none of us here like you, and while these two probably wouldn't push back, you better worry about me, who's still mulling it over."
"I'll say it again," Jay replied, doing his best to stay calm. "I don't give a damn what you think about me. Don't get upset with people who only just met you because you were a failure in life."
All our dreams can come true — if we have the courage to pursue them. -- Walt Disney
He punched Jay square in the nose, then grabbed Jay's shoulder to keep him from flying back, and launched his knee right between Jay's legs where it hurt. Kazimir shoved him down to the floor and gave another kick in Jay's shin for good measure.
Kazimir saw red. Blood rushed to his face and his eyes widened with fury as his brows pointed sharply down. Jay didn’t know anything about Megan. He didn’t even know her name, and he was assuming what Megan would’ve wanted? Megan had loved him for who he was: a fighter, through and through.
He snarled, staring at Jay with a mounting anger. His words came out low, deep, and sincere.
“I’m. Going. To kill you.”
As he reached his arms out to grab for Jay’s head, the lights went out. The bulb above them burst, and a sickly hum buzzed throughout the whole building. The momentum of Kazimir’s claws came to a complete halt, and it was as if something seized control of his body. He couldn’t move his limbs. He couldn’t step forward. Nothing.
He stood frozen, trembling with rage as he fought in vain against whatever power held him, and then he felt himself thrown back into a chair that immediately bound him by the waist, the wrists, the ankles, and even a strap around his forehead.
Autonomy was granted once again to him, but his limbs were locked by what felt like metal, tight and secure against his skin. Still, he shook against them, trying to break free. He couldn’t.
The lights came on with a flicker, but returned with a dim, red light.
The floor was covered in blood again, and this time the level rose to his ankles. The smell was sickening. Kazimir had seen and done many, many things, but the thickness of the stench made him want to retch.
A quick glance around showed that the others were all in metal chairs too, each one bound to it just as he was. They almost reminded him of the chairs people got tied to when they were electrocuted to death.
He gripped the arms of the chair tightly and growled.
Jay was in the chair to his left. Charlie to his right. Fiddler at the end. The bulletin board, in the corner of his eye, was gone.
He was restricted. There was blood up to his ankles. And the shadow had finally decided to show himself again - thankfully, it was before Kazimir could severely hurt Jay. Charlie knew he should have been more scared than he was; he was just barely a college graduate.
But being restrained wasn't so bad when he remembered similar events from lives that could have been, and the blood wasn't all that bad compared to what he had done in his bio classes. The blood wasn't even coming from anywhere. If there had been a body, Charlie would have felt different. He knew that.
But there wasn't.
And that - surprisingly - made one big difference.
"I was wondering when you were going to show up," Charlie nonchalantly and cheerfully said, hiding the fear he did have behind a smile. Fighting against the restraints wasn't going to get him anywhere. He had to wait for an opportunity to escape. If he waited just long enough, one was bound to present itself. "This definitely fits the aesthetics of this place more than the bulletin board."
He thought for a moment.
"If we're going to talk," he said, "you can go first."
Kazimir's face was burning. His knuckles turned white as his nails dug into his palms, and he managed to barely turn his head to the side, but he could feel the metal digging into his skin. Hearing the fiddler whimper triggered something in him, an old instinct he couldn't fight.
He didn't care how old the fiddler supposedly actually was. None of that made sense to him. In his eyes, the fiddler was a kid, and the shadow was making him cry. Rage once turned against Jay turned to the shadow and welled inside his chest like a roaring flame. He used all of his strength to push against the binds.
The chair rocked forward before he felt a very tangible force push it back flat on the floor with a loud thump that echoed through the room. Kazimir hissed through his teeth.
Jay and Charlie were pretending not to be scared. Teasing the shadow. But the fiddler was crying, and that wasn't right. Someone needed to give the shadow what he deserved, but the shadow hadn't even shown himself yet.
"Charlie," the shadow's voice reverberated throughout the room. "I have never, and will never need your permission to speak."
Two red eyes that shone like deep pits of bubbling magma faded into view, and the shadow's smoky silhouette followed. He was standing right in front of Charlie.
"But it's cute that you still pretend to have control. I guess that's what made you a good superhero in the end. You'd think you'd be more grateful for your second chance."
The shadow sighed, pulling away from Charlie and more into everyone's view. The shadow's gaze slowly drifted over to fiddler.
"...You all could learn a lesson from him," he said, then looked over at Jay and Kazimir.
The shadow had appeared right in front of him. Even though Charlie hadn't jumped in surprise, every inch of his body wanted to - he hadn't expected the shadow to appear so close. And he hadn't expected the initial response, either.
He took a deep breath the shadow hopefully hadn't noticed while the shadow was looking over at Jay and Kazimir.
"It was more of polite gesture than anything else," Charlie said. "I know you don't need my permission to speak - you are the one who trapped us here - but manners never hurt, right?"
He glanced over at Apollo.
He wanted to comfort him, but he wasn't sure how to when they were both restricted. It was a stupid thought to have, but part of him wondered if the shadow would be more lenient on the others if he kept drawing attention to himself.
Charlie wasn't stupid. He knew if he didn't think of a way out of this, this could end horribly. He was still very much Charlie Greene, but he knew that Wally West's story didn't always end in victory. How many times had he died or vanished from the timeline across the multiverse when trying to save the day?
And those versions of him had actual superpowers. He just had an attitude that probably wasn't going to help him that much.
"I'm not sure I'm the best person to learn lessons from," he said, making his voice a little louder. "And I'd probably be a little more grateful for my second chance if I had my memories from the start and got to see my loved ones. But I know my life's a tragedy, so that last part isn't all that surprising."
He paused, mulling it over for a minute. Every inch of his body was screaming at him to run, but running was something he thankfully couldn't do right now.
"I was right, wasn't I?" he guessed. "You wanted to see us squirm."
"You can explain yourself," Jay said to the Shadow, growing impatient. He wasn't sure he had anything to learn from anyone else. "Why did you bring us here?"
All our dreams can come true — if we have the courage to pursue them. -- Walt Disney
The light flickered. Kazimir was starting to sweat.
"Squirm," the shadow repeated, turning its back to them, its limbs fading at the ends into little tendrils of smoke. "Yes. I wanted to see you squirm, grieve, cry, rage, regret."
"Charlie... you're not as thick as these two. Regret came to you and the boy easily. Kazimir felt some for the lost time with his family. But Jay..."
The shadow vanished. For a solid three seconds, there was complete silence. Even the faint buzzing of the dim red light above them was absent.
The shadow appeared on Jay's lap, face to face. Kazimir did not envy Jay at this moment, as much as he wanted to tear the shadow to shreds.
"I suppose it's time for the inevitable."
The shadow drifted off of Jay's lap, passing between Kazimir and Jay's ears.
"You might like to know the blood you're sitting in," he whispered lowly. "Is your own... with a few friends added."
The lights went out again. In a second, they were back, and in front of each of them was a casket. Only the fiddler's was closed.
Kazimir stared into his own dead, lifeless face.
He could remember. He remembered it all.
The day he'd been released from prison after the re-opening of his case, his son Bo had been attacked by one of his old enemies. Bo had been blinded, and though he fought off the attacker, the attacker got away, and Bo might not have made it if his wife hadn't found him when she did and wasn't a doctor. She'd been able to keep him holding on until the ambulance got him.
A rage and a grief deeper than words consumed him. His eyes immediately welled up with tears and he let out the most mournful cry in his life.
It had been his fault. His fault that Bo had gotten hurt. His sins had brought pain upon his own son.
Were his head not pinned to the back of the chair, he would've collapsed to the floor.
He could remember what happened after. He'd visited Bo in the hospital once and held Bo's hand tightly, promising that whoever had tried to take Bo's life would pay. No one would know. It would be his last crime, he promised. His last kill, he promised.
He'd fulfilled his promise and found Bo's attacker, an old childhood friend of Bo's named Trey, and ended his life right then and there.
But Trey's death hadn't gone unnoticed.
Kazimir had been walking home in the middle of the night when he'd been shot in the back of his knee. It'd sent him tumbling to the ground. He started crawling, hopping away, but the vengeance due to him was upon him. Trey's father had brought backup. Kazimir had been dragged into the back of a van, and he remembered blinding pain, and then nothing.
Kazimir was trembling, and sweat ran down his temple in one big droplet.
Regret.
Well, he felt many things now, and regret was definitely one of them.
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