V is for Vagenda (Part 22 – Betrayal)
"You want to believe that there's one relationship in
life that's beyond betrayal. A relationship that's beyond that kind of hurt.
And there isn't."
Caleb Carr
Betrayal
Remove love from life and what remains? There is no longer any joy to be had in
anything, as there is no one of significance to share and experience that joy
with. There is no longer any appeal or
taste to food, as life becomes something functional rather than something of
interest. The music in your heart stops,
nothing inspires. Color washes away from
the universe and everything fades to a transcendental sort of sepia tone save
for the things that remind you of love lost – and even that moment of brilliance
betrays you as those memories start softly and begin causing nothing but pain
the longer they get reflected upon.
A numbness to existence becomes a coping mechanism, and you
become devoid of all – including a sense of time passing. Sure, on a rare occasion it might occur to
you that a lot of time had been passing, but before the thought can completely
process, you are back to coping in a blanket of mental disassociative
numbness. Desires transition into
memories of a former self in a former life where anything was once capable of
having mattered.
Mostly out of a total disregard or care toward oneself a
routine evolves that serves to pass the days in a somewhat standard
fashion. Once in a while, habits evolve
to include an item or two that may seem of very little significance, but serve
to make yourself feel a little better about yourself. Holding doors open for people. Calling every stranger a respectful “sir” or
“madame”. Volunteering for duties you
really hate to do, but you know someone else that otherwise would have been
tasked the duty would have also hated.
These little things that can help you take a slight dulling to the
standard sharp edge of hate that you ritually tear into yourself with every
morning as you see yourself in the mirror.
Every pain and bad turn you suffer take on near religious
significance as you accept hardship into your life as something divinely
deserved. You push people out of your
life, not only to punish yourself, but to save them from having to cope with
you.
Despite all the darkness, in the inescapable dynamic of
contrast, you find a light source. For
Vagenda, it was her daughter.
Meanwhile in the Watchtower…
Black Widow looks down at Laura Lantern and helps her up off
of the mat. “Kalyeo, we are finished for
today. Usually you have so much more
stamina, and you come at me with all three of yourselves. Today, I feel like I’m punishing you to
continue. Are you alright?”, she asks
with genuine concern.
“I’m fine, just…” Laura goes to state defiantly, but drifts
off uncharacteristically.
“You have been increasingly losing focus. I’m actually getting worried, maybe you
should talk about it and get back on track.
Is it your ex? What is really
going on here?”, Black Widow asks sincerely as she gets Laura to her feet.
Laura grits her teeth at the mere mention of her
ex-fiancé. A part of her torn up with
the sense of enormous loss and loneliness, another part of her furious at
Future Lex Luthor forcing this state of affairs, but before it is too obvious
in her facial expressions or body language, composure returns swiftly as her
sense of professionalism and commitment to the mission takes over. Her posture returning, though fatigued, she
glances compassionately to Black Widow.
“Of course I’m upset over that.
I’ve had a lot of trouble not thinking about it all the time”, she said,
realizing this half-truth is the best way to ensure no one gets wise to her
real mission.
“Why don’t we go get a coffee and just…”, Black Canary
begins, but is abruptly cut off.
“I’m fine, really, and I’m so busy, like, you really have no
idea. Honestly, cutting things a bit
early today already helps so much considering just how much I have to catch up
on, so if it is OK, I think I’ll just get washed up and changed out of this
Dobok and jump into my work if you don’t mind, ok?” Laura says not
intentionally coming off as sharp as she just had.
Black Canary smiles supportively. “Of course, I’ll see you back in three days
then and we can pick-up from where we left off.
Good luck and do try to get some rest, ok?”, she says hoping that giving
Laura some room will be best for her in the short term.
It had been months since Laura was actually left in the
training area alone. In fact, up until
recently, she’d had a rather difficult time even finding Vagenda and keeping up
on things as she had started just disappearing from duties – absent for weeks
at a time. She wasn’t making it to
training, getting assigned to missions, or even socializing at the station.
After washing up and changing, Laura took the opportunity to
review the training logs to see what Vagenda’s last metrics were, laughing to
herself about how pathetically mediocre they must have gotten for lack of
training or missions for the last several months. Laura’s own healer alternate self had a
Restoration metric of over 4700, which was the metric Laura was most interested
in since Vagenda was a healer. In fact,
Laura had been working so hard and diligently on all her abilities over the
last 6 months, she had full confidence in just how superior her metrics would
be, and now just needed to see the figures proving it. “Computer, recognize Laura Lantern, L9, and
access training metrics” she smiles hoping no one comes in.
Her own personal metrics come up on the display, and she
smiles at the results of her hard work.
“Display training metrics for Vagenda, V1, please”.
Laura smiles as the data loads into the screen, but stops
short screaming as she sees the Restoration metric. “5489!!!???
How? She hasn’t even been working
or training!?”, she snarls under her breath furiously. Reviewing the history revealed that over the
last 8 months, Vagenda only made it to training 5 times. Of those records, her first metric rated her CR57
with Restoration at 1597. 2 months later
it read CR74 with a Restoration of 1830.
A week later, she rated CR84 with a Restoration of 2194. 6 weeks afterwards, it was CR89 with a Restoration
rated 3032. The last record showed CR104
with Restoration 5489. It didn’t make
any sense! You need discipline,
dedication, diligence, and commitment to training and real mission experience
to hone your powers in any meaningful way.
Laura’s perfect attendance and unfaltering commitment to bettering her
selves was commonly acknowledged as unrivaled, and Vagenda’s been largely
MIA! The data was impossible!
Laura, trying to overcome her anger, and not consider it
jealousy, started to calm down. She
tried to rationalize the data, and then noticed something she had previously
been too angry to notice. She had
overlooked the date of the last record.
It was today! Vagenda was here
today! That means the mark is likely
currently on the Watchtower right now…
“Computer, close logs”, Laura states flatly, recomposing
herself, and strutting out of the room.
Meanwhile in the Hall Of Doom, Future Lex Luthor monitors
Laura’s actions and behavior with an amusement, thinking to himself how he
hadn’t anticipated how competitive women can be of each other when he first
managed to manipulate dynamics such that Laura worked for him. Luthor was thrilled to see how short
tempered, unfocused, and out of sorts Laura Lantern was becoming, and impressed
with how skillfully she manipulated Black Canary for noticing. However, Luthor knew this was but step one
symptomatically of his plans for Laura.
Having the benefits of foreknowledge left him with strategies Brainiac
had used in the other timeline to weaken and ultimately defeat almost every
superhero he encountered, save for the ones he was solely responsible for
creating by virtue of having brought back Brainiac’s Exobytes from the future
and allowing them to rain randomly upon the human race in this time. Seeing as
how all the powers contained within the Exobytes were derived from heroes he
had already watched fall to stratagems designed in the future by Brainiac, Lex
was not surprised his plans were working where implemented now on the newly
formed heroes. While reflecting on his
own designs, and confidence in them, Future Lex Luthor suddenly had his train
of thought interrupted by in incoming com request. He smiled, seeing who it was, and antagonized
“You had better not be wasting my time with empty updates.”
“I have eyes on the mark.
She’s in the Aquacultural Garden’s area with someone named Mass
Annihilation. I haven’t seen him
before. Should I recall the other
Laura’s and get on point now?” asked an eager Laura Lantern.
“No. I have new
missions for them and they are uniquely positioned to execute given where they
presently are. You will have to manage
without them for the time being. You
know what you have to do from here now that you’re able to make contact” jeered
Luthor, closing the line of communications abruptly.
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