Archive of Our Own ^beta

He's not supposed to be here. It had been a mistake, but there he was. The world itself seemed to be toxic to him- if he had flesh and blood, it was only a wrapper; a way for the rules to protect themselves against him breaking them- a pearl around an irritant. He would eat, but it clearly did not satisfy. He mostly rested. On the couch. In their bed. In seats. In the field. Publicly and privately. Even when half-asleep, dozing, the raw menace he exuded was enough to protect him from prying questions he did not have the patience for.

He was a simple creature in a complex world, and they did not fit together. Exerting the body in ways he found familiar; the chase, the adrenaline rush of being at bat- seemed to help. Exerting the brain did less; his mind wasn't in it and it held less sway. Art annoyed him, and literature bored him. Radio he was the most he would do. He stayed mostly because... he didn't know how to leave. No one could tell him if death would return him, or to oblivion, or to... somewhere else.

He was also still injured- not in the flesh (which was not really his) but the inside of his self. Something had been ripped, or torn, and he struggled to recuperate in this world of so many, too many rules. It was a half-aware existence, but the half he was aware of consisted of her. Were he healthy, were he less poisoned by his own existence, he would be confused at that. But at the time, he did not feel unkindly about her and what she caused in him.

Things happen. He doesn't keep track of them. It doesn't matter. It doesn't.

Then it does. A new world. Different than before. Less toxic, less damaging. Simpler. Cleaner. It is still sullied. It still needs to be purified. Only then, he knows, he can stop. His mission will be completed, and he can rest in the nothingness that comes after. The rules still bind him, still force him into a shape he still does not truly understand. But here he can eat, and be filled. The flesh of things that also existed were sustaining. There is a way out. Remove the source of the impurities- the ghosts. The guardians. The Queen. The thing she protected. She had called him into the world, and she would let him out.

The rules are dying at the end of the world- it's only a world, too small, too confined to be anything more. The Queen is dead, splattered across the ground, and the son besides her. No one to sustain the rules, to impose them on reality. With the death of the world, he changes. His body hisses and pops- plasticine skin running liquid, meat insides sizzling and cooking as his bones glow dull red with his purpose, his desire. To purify. To clean the world of its contamination. To turn it off, and render it into a memory that could pollute no more of existence. His face is melting, but pain isn't real. It's only the pearl around his essence that suffers, and he does not care.

What grows from the candle-flame of his form is not meat, nor smoke or metal or plastic. Not even sugar. His breath is labored and iron-scented, dense and strong and powerful. It is something certain. Something simple. Something pure. The eyes, though. Those were the same. White lamps seeing everything and nothing, peering out in distaste, in disgust at the world surrounding him.

When the Judge sees him, he is a sad sight: A slowly-cooking shamble wrapped in a uniform that refused to burn. The bat was long-forgotten, the succor of his obsessions no longer needed. The slender rings still trail him loyally. They didn't know better; they were rules in physical form, after all. He had yet to break them. He would. But there was more to topple before them.

And he would turn off this world. Take its memory and return to where he was supposed to be, where no one would call him away. This would never happen again. It was better this way. To leave purity behind, and vanish, taking his name with it.

The Judge wasn't real, he knew. It was a spectre like everything else here. Nothing here was real or true. The Queen had been too real- too complex, too busy. The son had been too bloody, full of systems and liquids he did not understand. He didn't care. He had to purify all things here, render them down from blasphemous false-realness, into something better. Something pure, that would only remain with him. He knew. He didn't suppose. He didn't guess. The Batter was a thing of black and white, of certainty. He knew he was strong, and so he was.

He would turn this crumbling un-real into something better, and no Judge would stop him from his mission.