Sell you a Bridge chapter 141 (Patreon)

??? December 22nd 2010 11:00 AM EDT

I  woke with a groan. My head hurt, my body hurt, my hair hurt somehow. I  was basically just a walking concentration of pain at this point and I  did not enjoy that. I shifted slightly, checking for broken bones, and  fortunately I didn't find any. I was surprised I'd even taken this much  damage with my frankly absurd vitality. As I moved however I noticed  something slightly unnerving. Pine needles. Also dirt, and small rocks,  and roots. I was lying in the woods. Which was weird because I was not  an outdoorsy person, so the reason for me being here couldn't be good.

I  finally opened my eyes, and sure enough, I was in the woods. Well, that  was misleading. Calling this "the woods" implied that it was in any way  similar to forests that I had seen before, and it really, really  wasn't. For one thing the trees were absolutely huge. Like... as wide  around as a relatively small building, and much taller than they should  feasibly be based on their width. My eyes widened as my brain revved up  and finally processed where I was and what had happened. I rolled over,  scrambling in the dirt to try to find any sign of the girls.

I  heaved a sigh of relief when I saw them nearby. I was guessing one of  us had shielded them or something because they looked a bit jostled but  not nearly as beat up as I felt. I was glad, since I suspected the  amount of damage it would take to leave bruises and lasting pain on my  half ghost half devil body was enough to smash them into paste. I  spotted a shock of red hair off to one side and noticed with some relief  that Wally was in one piece too. That was good, Artemis would have  killed me if he died.

I  considered waking them up now, but I figured it would be a better idea  to do some recon. For all I knew sleep might be hard to come by here.  Their auras were stable, so I wasn't worried about head trauma or  anything. I just dragged Wally over by the girls and created a few  clones to head off and look around while I got started building a fire.  Luckily Jim had been fanatical about preparation and shoved tons of  books down my throat, and I remembered how to make a smokeless fire.

The  clones cost twenty points a piece and I made five of them, bringing my  now fifty six hundred points down to fifty five. I seemed to remember  being at seven thousand still, so I must have pumped out quite a bit  shielding the others. Once they headed out I started gathering all the  broken branches and sticks I could find into a pile along with a pretty  decent moss bed. It took me a while to remember exactly how to make a  smokeless fire, but it seemed like time worth spending to make sure we  weren't noticed by whatever lived out here.

Digging  a hole to burn the stuff in was much less annoying than expected,  mostly due to my ability to make a shovel out of the grey amalgam of  ectoplasm and shadows that I had mentally decided to call Deadsteel. I'd  noticed during the fight with Circe that the combination of shadow and  ectoplasmic constructs created much more durable and much longer lasting  objects. In fact, I was pretty sure the stuff would actually stick  around unless I dissolved it, so it was pretty ideal for tools.

After  I dug the pit and got the fire going properly without the big cloud of  smoke to tell all the ghoulies and ghosties where we were, I carried the  others over to lay them down around the fire. I didn't feel like it was  night time exactly, but the canopy of these giant ass trees was so  dense it kind of seemed like the middle of the night. After I got that  done I sat down on a chair I pulled from my spatial ring and took out  some food. I had hot dogs I could cook, but I didn't want to give us  away to predators with the smell so I decided to wait until my clones  got back. I just had some chips.

After  fifteen minutes or so my clones came back. Or at least four of them  did. Their flight was pretty damn fast under the combined propulsion of  my wings and ghostly power, so they had covered about a mile around us  in four different directions and found...nothing. Well, they found more  woods, and in one direction what seemed like some sort of giant ant  hill, but the aura around the place was freakish and horrible and I  definitely didn't want any part of whatever lived down there.

One  of the clones had tried going up into the canopy to check out the sky  and hadn't come back, which meant that was the only direction I didn't  know was a dead end. I integrated the knowledge of the one mile around  us as thoroughly into my mental map of the place as possible and  considered what to do next. Before I could decide though, a groan  reached my ears. I was up in a flash, sword drawn, but it was only Wally  waking up.

I  sighed and sat back down, nodding to the sidekick. "Oh, hey. Try not to  make too much noise, the girls are still out. I want to let them have  their rest while I know they can get it. We have no clue what's here." I  reached into my spatial ring and tossed him a power bar. "I know how  much you eat, figured you might need a pick me up. I hate these things  and only keep them for emergencies so you can have it."

He  stared at me, his brain catching up to the situation as he looked  around, then down at Artemis, and up at me. He unwrapped the power bar  and bit into it viciously, clearly angry. "Do you really need the mask  Morgan? It's not like it's hard to figure out who you are now that I  found out my girlfriend is a murdering sociopath." He spoke around a  mouthful of food but his voice was still icy and biting. I was pissed at  the comment, I wanted to blast him with a bolt of exctoplasm, but  cooler minds prevailed and I held back.

I  took a deep breath. "First of all. Artemis has never killed anyone. She  doesn't approve of me doing it either, even though she knows its  necessary. If she had been awake to hear that you would have a foot of  steel in your guts, instead of getting the rational response I'm giving  now. Second of all. for someone who doesn't care it was awful stupid to  throw yourself into an unstable portal to an unknown higher dimension to  try to save her. Maybe snapping like an asshole isn't the way to play  this."

He  looked frustrated, and for a second I thought he would attack me, but he  just slumped down. "How could she lie to me about this? How could she  not tell me? After all the things we went through lately..." He stopped,  blinking. "Shit that's why she broke up with me isn't it. She found out  I was Kid Flash." I nodded, taking off my mask and he just sighed. "I  don't...I don't know what to do Morgan. I love her. I love her so much  it hurts, but how do I live with this?"

I  shrugged. "You just do, man. If you hadn't noticed my lady love and I  aren't exactly on the same pole of the moral compass, but we make it  work. Sometimes it's hard, sometimes she hates the things I do. But she  loves me, and she knows her world is better with me in it. Or at least  that's what I've gathered from her responses when I ask her what she's  doing with a basket case like me." I chuckled a bit at my own joke,  because no one else was going to.

Wally  furrowed his brow. "Is it really that easy? Love will find a way? That  just seems so...delusional. Like I'm just ignoring reality to live in my  own little bubble. Because yeah, I have to admit my world is better  with her in it, but how do I deal with know she could be out robbing or  hurting someone, doing the exact same things as the people I work so  hard to stop, and not feel like a total hypocrite?"

I  rolled my eyes. "Oh get over yourself." He looked shocked. I could see  his face better since his mask was shredded and his eyes had widened in  incredulity at the comment. "Your entire profession is an exercise in  self delusion. The world sucks, everyone in it suffers. For every person  you save a million more will die before you finish asking if they're  ok. We take the happiness we can get. Is you ignoring Artemis possibly  committing crimes any different than unknowingly ignoring a hundred  thousand other people doing the same thing?"

He  seemed lost for words, so I kept going. You delude yourself every day,  thinking the one or two bad guys you stop make a difference in the grand  scheme of things. Artemis isn't a monster, she isn't sauteing babies  and pairing them with a nice cabernet, she's a thief. Hell all of us are  thieves, the killing was never something I wanted, I did what I had to  do to protect my own, and it made me sick, but don't project that onto  her. She's her own person, and if your relationship isn't more important  to you than her snatching a rolex from some rich guy, you don't deserve  her."

The  fire crackled, but I hear another sound under it, a gasping sound of  pain and sorrow, and I jerked my head over to see Artemis sitting up on  the other side of the fire, hand over her mouth and eyes full of tears.  She was looking at me with gratitude and affection, and I just rolled my  eyes at her. "Oh stop that, you'll make me regret it." I turned back to  Wally. "Don't be an idiot. Don't throw away happiness because of some  imaginary line you don't want to cross. Hell, I'm pretty sure Batman is  banging Catwoman, so it's not like the League can demote you for having a  criminal sidepiece."

I  had to dodge the rock Artemis threw at me for that comment but it was  pretty much childs play. I looked over to see Zee still resting  peacefully but the love birds needed alone time so I stood up and  offered them my chair. "You guys take a seat." I tossed some food on the  chair. "Eat up. I'm going to go do some recon, I checked most  directions but I still have to see what's up above the canopy." With a  nod to both of them I melted into shadow form and raced across the  clearing and up onto the nearest tree.

My  clone had tried intangibility but that hadn't save it, so I decided to  rely on not being physically present to get the job done. Hopefully  whatever killed my clone couldn't hurt me like this. I headed up the  trunk of the tree. And up. And up. And up some more because dear gods  these things were tall. It felt like I was traveling for a half an hour  before I finally made it to the top and slipped out between the  branches.

I didn't see what had  killed my clone, maybe it was an ambush predator, but at the very least  my aura sight wasn't picking up anything out here in the sky with me, so  I very grudgingly returned to my physical form so I could use my eyes  properly instead of relying on the weird sort of area of effect sight I  had as a shadow. I turned on the tree top, looking in every direction  but when I turned one specific way I froze. Huh, I'd expected a lot of  things in this weird higher world, but giant floating golden city was  not one of them. That was new.