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youngjusticerevival · 5 years

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a small-ish drabble chronicling Evie’s post-season 1 arc. songs listened to while writing: x & x.

an anthology of fake smiles

It felt for a while she’d been faking her smiles. She faked it to the grocery store checkout. She faked it to Barry, and Iris, and Bart. She faked it to the Team, to him. And she faked it now at the groundskeeper, who griped at her to hurry up before the gates closed and she was locked inside.

The supermarket flowers wilted in her hands. Evie clutched them loosely, taking in a shuddering breath as she turned her chin up, regarding the choice before her. High gated walls, poked with iron-wrought spikes at the top, rose up above her. She was small here, just a phantom passing through, a breeze. The only indication of her ever being there came as the faint scuttle of leaves along the dry pavement.

But now, she had ceased to exist as a breeze. It was hard to be just a memory among the true, real ghosts buried in the cemetery. She took a step forward, then another, until she had crossed the threshold of the last part of her journey.

***

Evie hadn’t expected the news to be so catastrophically gut-wrenching. It was like a punch that knocked the wind out of your lungs, the kind of sucker punch that made you keel over. To be honest, she had known for a while. Not consciously, of course, but deep-down she had been aware that she was not who she was.

So when the scientist cackled, gurgling up blood to spit at her feet, and snarled,

“Your parents? Your parents sold you. You’re a gutter rat, a nobody, and we gave you a purpose, saved you from your meth head parents, you ungrateful little bitch - ”

Sam had been the one to knock his lights out with a harsh kick, even though she was sure she saw Rose mouth something, too, but the damage had already been done.

Evie had staggered away, until she found a corner to throw up in.

The last piece of Evie Buchanan died.

***

It started with Rose.

Really, it started with Alex. The Bat had been the one to track Evie down and when she refused to come back to the Team, Alex had pinned her and threatened to knock the sense into her until she agreed to talk to her very, very distraught girlfriend. Evie, of course, had refused at first, but she relented after a while. But only after Alex slammed her head into the concrete a few times, of course.

(Normally she wouldn’t be afraid. Normally she’d have a certain archer on her side. But he couldn’t help her. Not in the state he was in.)

She probably deserved it anyways, the head bashing. That’s how she found herself sitting on the edge of a Gotham skyscraper with Rose as the dawn broke over the city, their legs dangling off the edge.

Always taunting death, but never joining.

“Why are you doing this?” Rose had breathed when she first stepped from the shadows, her hands fisting themselves in Evie’s shirt.

“Why’d you turn to dark magic?” Evie had asked coldly.

Rose had slapped her. Evie deserved that. But it didn’t stop her from slamming her boot into Rose’s chest, until they were brawling on the top of a skyscraper, hurling insults at each other.

It ended with Alex ripping the two off of each other, and that’s how they ended up here. The argument, the tears, those had passed. All that was left were scrapes and bruises, tear tracks, and the throbbing ache in her skull Evie nursed now.

Evie flicked some of Rose’s blood off her cheek, just as the magician cleared her throat. She reached out, and Evie didn’t do anything, not as Rose closed her hand over hers. She squeezed, three times. She was crying, again, but she always cried, and Evie didn’t dare look, not unless she wanted to fall apart.

“Just remember at the end of this, you have somewhere to run back to,” Rose murmured, just barely loud enough so the wind didn’t cover it up. Evie hummed, but didn’t agree. She could feel Rose’s eyes on her. Finally, the witch heaved a sigh.

With that, she pushed herself to her feet precariously, balancing on the edge before stepping off.

“Well, as you know of course, it’s past my bedtime and I do require my full 8 hours,” and at this Rose sighed deeply, as if 8 hours was such a price to pay, “of beauty sleep.”

“I’m sure,” Evie replied, turning only slightly to catch Rose’s silhouette. The soft glow of a billboard made her look ethereal, more magic than she ever was human from the way her white blonde hair gleamed silver.

Evie gave a smile, and she knew Rose caught it, from the way her face crumpled. Fake smiles. Rose hesitated, fingers flexing as if she might reach out. But she didn’t.

“Come home soon, please,” Rose murmured, and with that, she turned, disappearing into the shadows, where no doubt a Shadow did wait for her.

***

“Hello?”

…

“...hello?”

“Hey.”

...

“Evie? Evie! God, where are you? Where the Hell have you been?”

“I’m fine, Iris, I -”

“Like Hell. Do you know how worried we’ve been? Barry hasn’t stopped looking for you, and Bart, he can’t eat chicken wheezies, Evie. Chicken whizzies! Where. Are. You?”

“I’m...I’m fine Don’t worry about it..”

…

“Like Hell - I ...Evie, please. Please, just, come home. Please, come home.”

...

“Iris, I’m fine, really. I just, need time.”

“Evie, honey, we can help you, please. Please, just let us -- ”

“SORRY THIS CALL WAS DISCONTINUED. DIAL AGAIN?”

***

Max came next.

He arrived subtly, in the passing autumn when the leaves fell and crunched underfoot. Sometimes Evie didn’t understand Max, she realized dimly, much later. She didn’t pretend to either. It was something she accepted, a long time ago, in between sharing s’mores energy bars and bonding over a mutual grief neither wanted to address just yet.

“How’d you find me?” she asked with sigh as his blurred figure approached in the window.

A pause. She craned her neck, only to find the bird had slipped past her.

“Well,” he said, grunting as he took a seat at the table, “ it took some master-sleuthing, but I finally followed the trail of energy bars and,” he spread his arms, as if to say ‘look’, “here we are.”

He leaned forward, settling his elbows on the table between them. Evie let the hint of a smile across her lips. She had missed this. Max had a rare ability to calm her down. She crossed the distance between them, nudging aside some salt shakers in the process, to gently take hold of his wrist. Just like that, the buzz of energy in her slowed, before it fizzled out. She didn’t feel that itch to run and disappear, just a dull, waning urge.

Max said nothing.

“So,” he said after a minute, “you going to tell me what’s going on with you, Red? You’re taking quite the extended vacation.”

Evie considered telling him. But like she had considered telling Rose, the moment passed. She let go of Max’s wrist, settling back in her seat. All at once the same prickling energy returned in full force. She winced.

“If I told you, you’d try to help.”

“What if I don’t want to help?” he retorted.

Evie raised her head, ignoring the way he studied her, as if she were a case, a puzzle, waiting to be cracked.

“You always want to help.”

He didn’t answer. But his lips did twist down sourly, before he lifted two fingers, flagged down a waitress. He ordered fries, and a milkshake. S’mores.

“Are you coming back, Red?” he asked eventually, between a mouthful of fries.

Evie considered the question, before stealing one of his fries.

“Nope. Not yet.”

His lips twisted. But he nodded, and the waitress came sidling up, asking if they wanted refills on water. They talked about little else. But he made her laugh about something dumb, and for a minute, just for a fleeting second of the After, Evie felt closer to home than she had been in a while. She didn’t notice the motorcycle that time, nor the rider, black helmet resting in his lap as he watched.

***

She hadn’t really expected Jason to find her, but she suspected by the reaction he gave her, a wide-eyed impression of a deer in the headlights, that she had found him. And maybe, if she believed in destiny or fate or something like that, then that’s where she needed to be. Because really, he seemed to be in worse shape than her.

He had dark circles under his eyes and the faint beginnings of a scratchy beard edging around his jaw. So she took a seat, and with the fake she bought in the back of a seedy bar in Idaho, she ordered a round for them.

They nursed their beers together in a dingy bar somewhere in the heart of Jump City, until Evie found herself lightheaded, and Jason mumbling about something, about Guy, that she couldn’t remember.

And finally, the question, the age-old question. He tipped his head back, swallowing the last drop of beer, before he clanked it down on the counter.

“You coming home?”

Evie paused, lifting her head. She couldn’t get drunk. A side effect of speedster life. The scars burned on her stomach. A life she had paid dearly for. Her lips twisted, and she almost offered a smile, before it guttered on her lips.

“I don’t know,” Evie whispered after a moment, and it was the closest she had gotten to the truth in a while, which scared her. She found his searching eyes, her own sharp. “Are you?”

Jason grunted. No. Then he tipped back his fifth beer. That’s where they left it.

***

Beeep.

“Heeey, Evie. Eves. Evester. Yeah, it’s Bart. I don’t know if you’re using this number, but can you call me back? Iris isn’t sleeping. Barry ran around the world three times. Three! Can you believe it? But seriously. Just come home. This isn’t crash anymore. Okay, well, later. P.S. the Terrors keep asking where you are. Okay, bye - wait! I miss you, too. Okay, now, later!”

***

TO: [email protected]

FROM: [email protected]

Evie,

I hope you are doing well. Zach taught me how to use the e-mail, so I thought I should reach out. Ray would like to say hello, as would Zayn and Sebastian. Ronnie says, and I quote, “Watch out for yourself, kid.” Jalil is not present at the moment, but I am informed that he has been actively keeping track of your whereabouts, as well as the others. We are doing well here.

Wishing you the best,

Cora

P.S. I know you may not wish to hear it, but we do miss you, Evie.

***

Evie checked her e-mails often enough. She checked them often enough to know that Iris had sent her dozens of them, Cora sent one, and then Zach sent one everyday, but only to be annoying.

Today, he’d sent her a cache of eclectic cat memes before surreptitiously, just under that information dump, a location tag. Her location, of course. A subtle reminder if anything, but one she didn’t mind. She slid her phone back into her pocket, gaze wandering to the dusty window. It was about time to get going then.

“More coffee?”

Evie looked up, catching the tired, forced smile of the blonde waitress leaning over her, coffee pot shaking in her hands. That forced, strange smile slid over Evie’s lips, too.

“No, thank you.”

She stepped outside minutes later, and into the frosty morning, turning her collar against the cold. Today was Utah, closer to the destination than she was home. Nevertheless, she liked it here. The tall high mountains stretched above the city, just barely jutting out of the morning haze. He would like it here. Her heart ached, gave a stabbing pang that made her pause. It wasn’t unusual, to have her thoughts wander to a certain archer, but she had shoved them down recently. Maybe because of guilt, of what state she’d left him in, or maybe because she knew, despite the desperation in her chest to run to him, that they couldn’t be. They couldn’t, not until they had both figured it out.

Whatever it was they had to figure out, well, that’s what this sabbatical was for, right?

She let out a frosty puff of air, shouldering her bag, and checked both ways, before, with a flash, she was gone.

She never noticed the rev of the motorcycle that followed close behind.

***

Beeeep.

“Evie, it’s Barry. I don’t know how else to tell you this, kid, but we miss you. I’ve looked everywhere for you, but you’ve stumped me. Just, I miss you. Come home. Okay?”

***

It ended how it always did.

The amount of fake smiles Evie had given out that day amounted to a total of innumerable. She pushed her cart, ignoring the looks she got, giving them glassy vacant smiles. She knew - bloody lips, wide, black sunglasses, and wild mess of hair looked like she’d just gotten out of a bar fight. Really, she’d tripped running down a highway, and that was a much worse story than getting her lights knocked out in a sleazy bar. She caught the glare of a mother in a pink velour tracksuit staring at her baldly, her baby bouncing on her hip.

But then Evie smiled, and the lady’s face rouged, turning around so fast she knocked into a table of free pot-sticker samples.

The days seemed to be getting longer and the nights shorter and unfortunately, her emergency cash had started to run out. It didn’t stop Evie from stretching her arm out and dragging a row of cereals into her cart as she walked on by. She’d have to find more work soon, freelancing job maybe some muscle for hire.

She turned a corner, only to recoil.

It had been a while since she’d seen her own costume. The cardboard cut-out stood at her height, but her skin had been airbrushed, her windswept hair pulled back effortlessly into a bouncy ponytail. Mercury stood there, in all her cheery glory, reminding kids to take their vitamins, a fat bottle of superhero multivitamins clutched in her hand.

She knew Rose had one, too, and so did Max, Ronnie, and Ray, and Cora. Even Bryce had one, a recent addition but hey, well-earned. It had been some dumb promo work for the League, to improve their standing.

But now, Evie didn’t want to see it. She reached out, and turned her hero self to face a wall of pasta.

The satisfaction only lasted a second. The bitterness welled up in her like a sore stomach.

That girl was fake. Her entire concept had been fake from the start, and really, Evie thought as she wrenched her cart down the baking aisle, everyone could just forget about Mercury. She’d seen the news - there were questions, concerns if the same thing that happened to the first KF happened to her.

They’d never know that Mercury was currently pushing her self-loathing ass through a QuickMart in Star City, loading up her cart with junk food.

Why Evie ended up in Star City, she couldn’t tell you other than it involved a man named Scott Buchanan, and it ended with a very unhappy reality. Evie Buchanan had died. FindAGrave.com said so anyways. Scott Buchanan said so. So, Evie Buchanan didn’t exist. But Mercury did.

Evie huffed at that. She eased her cart into line behind a plump old woman wearing a large visor.

If Evie Buchanan was dead, then who was she?

This wasn’t the question she wanted to ponder in the supermarket checkout line, but it couldn’t be helped. There was another cutout of Ray, staring her down with that eerily cheery smile. A whole wall of them, some Leaguers, like Black Canary and Green Arrow, of course, but a lot of the team, and the one that made her heart kick up into some frantic drumbeat. An archer, bow drawn, his lips drawn into a severe utter lack of expression that nearly made a laugh tumble out of her lips. And next to him, they had placed her, a speedster with a wide, fake smile, the same one she had turned to face pasta. None of them had anything to sell. These were to take home.

So if she was dead, then who was that girl, smiling back now?

“Next.”

Who was that girl, that the team had begged to come back to?

“Miss, next.”

The girl that the motorcycle followed, waiting?

“Excuse me, miss -”

The answer hit her clear, all too overwhelming of a realization to be having in a Star City QuickMart. She was who she has always been. She was who her friends loved. She was Evie Buchanan. Not Evelyn. Not an experiment, not the girl she was mourning, not the life she never knew.

She had always been Evie.

Evie felt the everything, the bitterness, the spite, gutter in her before it spiraled away and she was left with a gaping epiphany of what to do next.

It was time to go home.

The stand of supermarket flowers was across the store, but that wasn’t a problem for Evie. She made it there and back in five. Five seconds. She pushed the cart away, forgotten, and slapped the flowers on the conveyor belt with a force that had the cashier blinking, hair settling back onto her shoulders from the quick breeze.

“Sorry,” Evie said, and plastered on that fake smile. “Just these.”

***

Evie exhaled slowly as a car passed her by. The sun beat down on her, through a thick bank of muggy clouds. Soon it’d be night, though, so it didn’t matter. She leaned back against the wall, sucking on a lollipop. She told herself she wouldn’t do this, wouldn’t keep adding names to the list. But it was hard to resist the curiosity. So here she was, watching as people passed in and out of the high gated grey walls.

‘Star City Cemetery’.

This was it, according to that helpfully grim website.

She closed her eyes against the sun, ignoring her sunglasses perched on top of her head.

He told her often he had a graveyard in his chest where his heart should be.

“Liar. I can feel your heart,” Evie would murmur in the hazy darkness that surrounded them in the early morning, and smooth her fingers against where his heart should be, feeling the rhythm of it against her palm. But he insisted. He insisted he had a graveyard blooming in his chest.

So, she decided, if he had a graveyard there, then she had one in her head, in the back of her mind, growing, growing, with each name she found etched into stone.

With a sigh, she pushed off the wall and made her way into the cemetery. The groundskeeper warned her to be fast. That was one promise she could keep. She had mapped out the way already, from the directory, and now she wound through the white markers, the tall angels, deeper into the cemetery.

Her path led her back, back past the military section, towards where the cemetery began to thin out into graying patches of grass and lone headstones, until there it was, underneath a scraggly oak tree. A simple stone marker. There were no others.

Evie bent down, resting the flowers on her folded legs.

A wind pushed back her hair, but she merely tucked it behind her ear, reading the worn-out engraving.

Evelyn Nilsson Buchanan

December 20, 2005 - June 21, 2011

She was dearly loved.

Evie sucked in a breath. She scrubbed away the tears gathering at her eyes, before letting it all sink it in. Was. Was loved.

“Correction,” Evie murmured sadly, tracing her fingers over the words. “She is loved.”

Quietly, she settled the supermarket flowers under the marbled stone next to a burnt-out candle and a soggy teddy bear.

Evie bowed her head, and let herself, for the first time, mourn the girl she used to be.

She stood when the sun began to cast the grey stone in gold, breaking through the leaves. It was time.

She didn’t look back as she wound her way out of the cemetery. She stepped outside, out into the dying light of the sun as it dipped beneath the ocean.

That’s where she found him, leaned up against that same motorcycle, hands in his pockets.

Evie slowed to a stop. Her heart sped up, her mouth catching in an ‘o’, before she pressed her lips together. He wasn’t looking at her. Instead, his head was turned to the skyline, the golden orange light catching on his features, making his dark hair glint with gold, his skin somehow warmer. Ethereal. No, Evie thought, biting her lip, not ethereal, just, real. Home. He looked like coming home. There were fainter dark circles under his eyes, but, more than that, he looked better. Some kind of hope rose in her chest. Maybe they’d both figured it out. A tired smile tugged at her lips, and finally, finally, he looked up, his eyes meeting hers.

Evie cleared her throat. She didn’t dare move just yet.

“Hey,” she called out softly, not hiding the nervous edges that caught in her voice. A gentle breeze tugged at her, and she pushed her hair out of her eyes, tucking the loose strands behind her ear.

“Hey,” Sam replied, just loud enough so she could hear. “Are you tired of running yet?” he asked dryly, straightening. His lips didn’t ever move above a quirk, but it was soft, the way he looked at her. The question was loaded like a gun. But it was one that Evie could finally answer.

She took in a shuddering breath, then, felt herself nod. “Yeah,” Evie answered, “I think I am.”

She crossed that distance slowly, and he pushed off his bike, meeting her halfway as she walked into his arms.

He banded his arm around her waist, curling the other around the back of her neck. In turn, she curled her arms around his back, like a puzzle piece fitting together. He held her like she might run again. But this time, she was sure she wouldn’t. She let his warmth sink into her, reveling in the feeling.

“Welcome back,” Sam murmured into her ear. Evie felt a sob of a laugh hiccup out of her, and she turned her head into his shoulder, curling her hands into the back of his jacket. It didn’t just feel like it. She was home.

This time, when Sam pulled back and brushed the tears away, a real smile bloomed on her lips.

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