“Life, death and rebirth are inevitable. ”
-- Rig Veda quotes
A part of me has died. She lay in bed, the sheets pushed down to the floor, her inability to gain any peace from sleep driving her over the edge. She had tried so hard...
A part of me has died and I couldn't do anything to stop it. And now I'm lost. I have nothing. Nothing. She pushed her hair away from her eyes and turned to look at the glowing neon numbers that drew her gaze. It was 0203.
What am I now? She closed her eyes. She knew that when sleep came... the dreams would come. Images of a stranger, that young African-American boy that had clambered into her subconscious and now refused to leave-- she didn't know why she saw him. She didn't know why she saw him, and she didn't know why, in her dreams, fire and flame warped around his limbs and he stood revealed as...
...Firestorm.
She opened her eyes. The clock read 0445. She had slept for longer than she had been able to handle for days, but it still felt like she'd just blinked. Blinked, and two hours had gone by. She leaned up, out of bed, and threw the sheets back where they belonged. What would she do now?
"Nothing," she whispered, "what is there to do?"
Lorraine Reilly had once been Firestorm. How long ago was it that her second life had come to an abrupt and harrowing end? A month? Not even that long. It had been three weeks since Firestorm had absorbed the energy vampire known as Starbreaker. Three weeks since Martin Stein had died. Three weeks since she lost the key component to her transformation into the Nuclear Woman. Her hand tightened into a fist, and she punched her bedroom wall. 'Key component'? Martin Stein had been a father to her. More than that. He truly was a part of her at times, the man that completed her, that made her more than the sum of her parts.
Lorraine was nothing without Firestorm. She'd handed in her resignation from the League, despite their protests. She was one of them, they had claimed. She was family.
No, she had thought,
I'm a burden. A waste. Why would they taunt her like that? Why would they just... try and make her feel better than what she was?
She looked around at her bedroom, and shook her head. She had wanted to curl up into a ball and stay like that forever. Regress into the form of a child, be beneath the radar of adult woes. But she wasn't allowed to do that, was she? No. Never. She wandered downstairs and out onto the patio of her back garden. She wrapped her dressing gown tight around her body, and looked up at the stars.
She'd once been able to make stars. She'd never tried, but it was well within her skill set, wasn't it? Mixing gases and minerals and sparking an explosion that made something so beautiful, so amazing... but that was last month. This was now. She reached out and watched a shooting star blaze across the night sky, and squinted as an emerald star seemed to grow brighter and brighter--
Kyle Rayner flew toward her, and settled above, a sad smile on his face. "Hey, Lorraine... how are you?" Green Lantern of Earth. Able to shape the universe as he sees fit with that ring of his. Able to do so much, and yet... when he's needed to... so little.
Lorraine wondered what she could do with a ring like that. She would think long and hard, and bring back the dead. And then she'd... she'd... she swallowed the lump that was building in her throat. "I'm
fine, Kyle. Can't you tell?" She blinked, hoping that he wouldn't see the tears.
Kyle's brow furrowed. He floated down to join her, and his ring-aura vanished as he stood beside her. "Mitch sent me... we're missing you. I would have come before, but... I wanted to give you some room. It was stupid, I should have... I should have come earlier."
"Should have, could have," whispered Lorraine, as she turned to go.
"
Lorraine--" Kyle put out his hand and a glowing green wall appeared before the former-Firestorm. His cheek quivered as he made the construct vanish... a stray thought forming where he didn't intend. Lorraine knew what that meant. It meant he wasn't focused. It meant he was feeling emotion, and she knew that he was truthful in his words. Kyle always did wear his emotions on his sleeve. "Don't be like that, please. You're a part of this team no matter what, you shouldn't have left, not without talking to us--"
"I'm not a member of the Justice League, Kyle. I'm just a civilian. Just little old Lorraine Reilly."
"Okay, so you lost your powers, but that doesn't mean--" Kyle realised his mistake before her cheeks swelled up with anger and pain. He knew that he'd spoken without thinking, that he'd made an error that could forever ruin their friendship. "I--"
"I didn't just lose my powers," Lorraine growled in the darkness of the night sky. Green Lantern's ring wasn't glowing. It was just the two of them, standing in her garden, and her, barely able to control the swelling anger in the pit of her stomach. Kyle said nothing. "I lost a father. Don't you understand? Martin was the closest thing to a dad I had since... since my own father passed away. He was the closest... closest thing to a father that I ever had. Period."
"I didn't know," said Kyle, "I didn't think--"
"It's fine, Kyle," Lorraine put up her hand, and managed a meek smile. "I never told anyone that before."
"I never met my father," Kyle's expression shifted. His voice was quiet, weak. "He left my mother before I was born. And after she died seven years ago... I thought I couldn't survive that. But then I met my wife. She made my life worth living again. And now I have my own family, a wife and a five year old son.” His mask melted off his face, and she could see his eyes, full of hope and wonder. “Believe me. The hurt will never be gone, but it will be easier with the time. And I want you to know that you have friends who are there for you when you need them.”
Lorraine embraced him tightly. He was always the dreamer. The wonderer. But there were moments, when she forgot how easy it was for him to talk first and think later, that he shone as a beacon of hope to the future. That was the Kyle Rayner she would always hold on to. She buried her head into the cushion of his shoulder, and sobbed. "I miss him so much. God, Kyle, why did he have to go?"
"I don't know, Lorraine, I really don't. And I know it's a clich'e, and I know it's not what you want to hear, but he wouldn't want you to be like this. He'd want you to move forward, no matter what. That's all any father wants for their child."
Their embrace ended, and she wiped the tears away from her eyes. "Y-yeah, I guess."
"I have to get home before Alex wakes up. I'm on breakfast duty... but if you need someone to talk to, we're always here, Lorraine. And when you're ready to rejoin the League, we'll be there too."
Lorraine watched as he flew away, and then wandered back into her house. She looked at the mess, a month's worth of not caring, and she nodded her head sharply in determination. She needed to overcome this. And living in squalor wasn't the way to start that. First thing tomorrow morning she'd grab some trash bags and get to work. She'd needed to do a spring cleaning for about three years now, and she didn't have anything else to... get in the way. She cringed. "Damn," she whispered, "it's not going to be that easy, is it?"
She headed upstairs, and made her bed, and then looked back at the alarm clock that had haunted her sleepless nights the past few weeks. 0515. Kyle had been a distraction, but not one long enough to make the night fade into day. She collapsed, face first, onto her sheets, and then closed her eyes. Sleep came soon enough, and on the fringes of her subconscious, a man sparked alight, and revealed himself to be--
--It was 0900 when the phone rang. She blinked herself awake and groped for the phone, and when she answered she had to clear he throat after she could barely recognize her own voice.
"...Hello?"
"Lorraine, you sound like death," said the voice on the other side of the conversation, and Lorraine's face lit up when she realised who it was. "It's R--"
"Ronnie? Is that you?"
Ronnie Raymond laughed, and she allowed herself a smile. "Ronnie? No one calls me Ronnie anymore, Lorraine. Ron, sure, but Ronnie?"
"Oh, I'm sorry Mr. Big and Important," Lorraine said, "what can I do for you?"
Ronnie Raymond. One of Martin Stein's students, and then one of his partners in science. The guy came a long way to be where he was now, and that was being one of the heads of his chosen fields of science. 'Science bad ass' Lorraine had read in a journal.
"I was wondering if you had spoken to Martin recently? I haven't heard from him for a few weeks, and I was beginning to get worried. His job's been in a bit of a risky position because of his absence, and our boss... well, he said that if he didn't hear from him in 24 hours he was gone."
How could she have been so stupid? So wrapped up in her own little world, she forgot about the wider one, where the real people lived. She was... "Oh, Ronnie..."
"Lorraine?" Ronnie's voice went quiet. "He's not... no."
"We need to meet," Lorraine said quickly. "We need to talk."
Ronnie was silent for a moment. "Time and place, Lorraine, I'll be there."
Lorraine had driven to the cafe. She was worried for a few minutes that she'd simply forgotten how to drive, so used to flying as Firestorm or teleporting with the Justice League. But no, within minutes she'd slipped easily back into the real life situation of driving a car, and she quietly resolved herself to the fact that, hey, being human? One of the masses? Wasn't so bad after all.
Wasn't
so bad.
Ronnie was already waiting for her when she walked in. He was nervous, tapping the side of his coffee mug in anticipation of their meeting. Her drink was waiting for her, and she smiled awkwardly as she picked it up. "Thank you," she had said, before clearing her throat. She then went on to tell the story of how Martin died, and she watched as Ronnie's face melted from agitation to anguish. Ronnie could barely hold onto his mug, and then, when she was done, was as pale as a sheet. "...I know."
"And you've lost your powers? Martin and I always had... theories on the nature of the Firestorm Matrix, you know? Ideas on how it came about, how it was created. It's the weirdest phenomenon. Does it occur naturally? Or, well, you know. Is their a higher thinking at work..." Ronnie swallowed hard. "God, I just... sorry, I'm barely holding it together, this is Martin we're talking about, he was like a cool uncle to me, you know. And... he was like a father to you."
"And ever since Martin died... I've been having this stupid guilt dreams, where I'm not Firestorm, it's someone I've never seen before, right? And it's like my subconscious is taunting me?"
If it were at all possible, Ronnie went from pale to paler. "...A black teenager? Tail end of his teens?"
"What?" whispered Lorraine. "How could you--?"
Ronnie leaned in close to Lorraine. "Because I've been having the same dream, every night for the past few weeks. I can barely sleep because of it. I always wanted to be Firestorm, Lorraine. Always. It was amazing as a concept, the combining of two consciousnesses, the idea that we are more than just the sum of our parts, and I just thought they were flecks of my subconscious plaguing me."
Lorraine managed a smile. "You weren't contemplating become a super-villain, were you?"
Ronnie shook his head. "Oh, Lorraine, of course not. You have no--" Lorraine was no longer looking at Ronnie. Instead, she had caught a glimpse of something-- someone-- outside the cafe. "Lorraine?"
"He's
there." She had seen the teenager. Lanky, dressed in clothes too baggy for him but not out of fashion choice-- she darted out of her chair and through the door, into the brisk cold of the morning air. He had gone. "He was here!"
Ronnie was pulling on his coat as he reached her, and helped Lorraine into hers. "I believe you, but I don't know, I just don't know. What's going on? Why would I have the same dreams as you?"
"Take me to STAR, Ronnie," Lorraine said, "I want to see what you and Martin were working on. See if it could have anything to do with this?"
Ronnie nodded. "Of course, Lorraine. Of course."
Lorraine and Ronnie drove in silence, until they reached STAR Labs. Ronnie had Lorraine sign the guest register, and then they were inside-- and as always, STAR Labs did no disappoint. The main lab was enormous and went down into the Earth for what looked like miles-- Lorraine could hardly believe it, and she had been a member of the Justice League for so long...
Ronnie and Lorraine reached Martin's office, and saw that all his belongings had been packed up, and that the lead scientist was waiting for them in Martin's chair. "Professor Raymond and... friend." He nodded curtly to Lorraine, and she felt the hairs on the back of her neck flitter up. "Ron, with Martin's continuing absence, I've decided to promote you to head of the department. Seems like a vacancy just opened up."
"Martin's dead," Lorraine blurted out. "So you can't... you can't fire a dead man, you know? I..."
Ronnie's hand found Lorraine's, and he squeezed gently. "She's right, sir. Martin's dead."
"Oh. Well, that changes everything," replied the scientist. "I'll give him a raise! I'll give him a bigger office!
Please," Lorraine did not like this man. Not one bit. "Regardless, Ron, as head of the department, you'll be requiring a new lab assistant. And--" The man looked over their shoulders, and cleared his throat. "Here he is now."
The two of them turned around and their jaws dropped. It was the teenager that had infiltrated their dreams. He had cleaned himself up, removed his over-large coveralls, and was now wearing a white lab-coat, but it did nothing to change the fact that it was
him.
"This is Jason Rusch. Make him at home, Ronnie."
