Chapter Text
It doesn’t even take a full day for the first of the Killjoys to show up looking for Jet Star. Ghoul had been hoping they had longer, he wanted to get into the van and drive out into the desert as far as the van would take them to try and hide out from all the frantic Killjoys who heard Deception’s broadcast and wanted to see for themselves if Jet Star really was back. Grace thinks he would have gone too, if Jet would go with him.
But Jet wouldn’t leave, and Ghoul wouldn’t leave without Jet so here they were. Grace doesn’t recognize the first group, they’re all bright dyed hair and the deep admiration of someone meeting their idol. Grace thinks she might hate them from the first glance.
They don’t treat Jet like a person, they treat him like a saint come back to life, like a storybook character rather than a man who is less than a week out of imprisonment. Grace hates them more for the way their eyes glaze right over Ghoul like he’s not there. She supposes that in some ways Ghoul has always been there. He made it out of the fight that supposedly killed the rest of the Fabulous Four. He’s been there the whole time, and therefore he’s not as interesting as Jet Star.
That first group didn’t even know him. They were a few years older than Grace, they wouldn’t have been older than 10 years old when Jet supposedly died. They grew up hearing of him as a legend, and the way they look at him shows that that’s how they see him, a legend come to life. It takes forever for Cherri to convince them to leave. It would have been easier to shoo them away if Jet didn’t talk to them. If he hid away and pretended like he wasn’t there they would have gotten bored and gone home. But Jet was too nice, too caring. Jet wanted to talk to them, he wanted them to get to see him as he was now. Grace thinks that maybe Jet thought that would humanize him, but the eyes of the Killjoys in front of him glow with reverence when they see his scarred face and arms.
“You’re a hero.” The leader, a woman with hot pink hair styled into high pigtails and a nose ring says. Her green-painted eyelids flutter as she looks up at him, the way one would have looked up at an old world saint. “You survived. You fought back.”
So did Ghoul Grace thinks. But she doesn’t voice it. Not now, and not later as the groups of Killjoys come to see Jet grow larger. The first group leaves, but Grace is sure they called their friends. The area is swarmed with teams, young and old, who want to get a look at Jet Star. If BLI wanted to attack, now would be the time. They have to know where Jet is, they’re not dumb enough to not have noticed an entire radio shack. Cherri might kill any Dracs that get too close, but if an exterminator really wanted them gone they could attack. But they don’t, there are no BLI vans or convoys to fill the roads to the outpost, just groups of people in cars and on bikes, even some on foot. They all travel like they need to see Jet Star for themselves to know that he’s alive, even though Grace knows full well that they have to have heard from someone else that the news was true. Some are people that knew Jet, come to see if it’s really him or an elaborate trick, but most never knew him in their lives. Most are young enough that he never felt real.
They didn’t live with him like Grace did. They didn’t know him like Grace does. But now they’re surrounding him like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Ghoul is hiding away. Grace doesn’t know where he went, she’s sure that he’s still watching from somewhere but he’s disappeared from view. He must hate this just as much as her. She doesn’t get the same attention as Ghoul, which is to say that she gets no attention at all.
Everyone looks right over her, to them she’s just another face in the crowd. Any other time she would have liked the anonymity, but right now it feels like a slap to the face no matter how many apologetic looks Jet throws her way. She wants to run off and hide with Ghoul, or steal the keys to the van to drive somewhere quieter until the fanfare dies down but she doesn’t. Instead she sits outside of the outpost, with a can of soda she swiped from Cherri’s stash and she watches the crowd.
She’s sitting out there when Clawhammer’s team arrives, just another van in a sea of many. The only difference between her and all the others that have come to see Jet Star with their own eyes is the fact that she doesn’t treat Grace like she’s invisible. She walks right up to her, her faded woven poncho blowing in the breeze before she seats herself right next to Grace to watch the scene like they’re old friends.
“Got any more of that soda?” she asks, casual as ever.
“Nope. Stole this one from Cherri.” Grace takes a sip. Cottonmouth and Dust Storm follow them, Cottonmouth sits next to Clawhammer, her head falling on the blonde’s shoulder in a practiced motion. Grace wonders for the first time if there’s something more than a feeling of camaraderie between the two. Dust Storm stands behind them, like he’s ready for a fight. He’s a big imposing guy, sitting and relaxing feels like a foreign behavior for someone like him. Grace doesn’t understand how he fits in a team with laid-back and carefree Clawhammer. Though remembering her old friends she thinks it might be best if a team has little in common, it keeps the others in line.
Like Jet keeps Ghoul in line and Ghoul keeps him from overdoing things. But right now Ghoul is nowhere to be seen and there’s no one making sure that his friend doesn’t spread himself thin trying to please everyone in the zones.
There is Grace, but she’s just watching, helpless as ever, from the sidelines.
“I thought he was acting weird, that day at Tommy’s.” Clawhammer comments, Grace remembers the suspicious glances she’d thrown Jet’s way the day the two of them met. “Knew he gave me a fake name. Knew Ghoul wouldn’t just trust anyone. Didn’t expect this though.”
“None of us did.” Grace admits. “I didn’t know it was him at first. I thought he was dead.”
“They wanted us to think he was.” Cottonmouth speaks in her quiet drawl. “BL/ind is using them as tools. Both of them.” Her dark eyes watch the scene with skepticism. Grace winces at her alluding to Party Poison. That’s what most people who came today wanted to talk about, but Grace didn’t even want to think of it. She couldn’t imagine her old friend as anything but the rebel she knew. “I can’t help but feel like we’re doing exactly what they want us to.” Clawhammer continues.
“Jet’s too nice to turn anyone away.” Grace says. “I hate it.”
“Yeah, it’s a real mess.” Clawhammer says, she reaches into the pockets of her poncho, pulling out a pack of cigarettes, “Want a smoke?”
Grace shakes her head. She doesn’t smoke. Ghoul’s been a smoker most of the time that she’s known him and she’s grown fond of the smell but he’s never let her smoke despite all the times she’s asked. She stole a cigarette once, just to see what it was like. Ghoul laughed at her as she hacked and coughed him awake. He made it look so easy, just as Clawhammer is right now. She takes a drag, holding the smoke in for a moment before blowing it out in a ring. As she smiles to herself, Cottonmouth plucks it from her fingers and takes her own puff like a perfectly rehearsed routine. Grace feels like a part of their circle right now, sitting with the two as they share a smoke, with Dust Storm watching their back.
“I don’t.” Grace says, even as she thinks about trying to impress her by taking a drag. Even if she did, she’d end up making a fool of herself by coughing up a lung anyway.
“It’s for the best.” Cottonmouth says, “It wrecks your lungs. Kills you slow.”
“Of course Ms. Doctor-to-be knows that.” Clawhammer teases, a hint of cruelty in her voice, “And Yet I still see you smoking.”
Cottonmouth sets her jaw but doesn’t answer, doesn’t rise to the bait.
“I wish they’d all go.” Grace says. She feels like a pouting child. “He just got back. They gave him no time to rest.”
“Yeah. I guess that’s pretty cruel.” Clawhammer agrees, taking another puff.
Grace nods at the crowd, “You gonna wait in the line?”
Clawhammer just shrugs, “Might just watch from here with you. You’ve given me all the answers I needed anyway. I don’t need to go gawk at the guy.” Her familiar wry smile crosses her face, “Might be fun to gawk at the rest of ‘em though. Should we play fashion bingo? Or bad fashion bingo? I’ll go first, I spot someone wearing three prints that totally don’t match.”
As she cackles Cottonmouth swats at her playfully, “Don’t be a bitch.”
“I’m always a bitch.” Clawhammer leans back, her head bumping Grace’s knees and sending her sandy blonde hair splaying over the leg of her knees, “Don’t grow up to be like me. Be more like Cotton here, at least she’s a smart bitch. She knows all that crap about plants and wound care and stuff.”
Grace frowns, she’d like to be like Clawhammer one day. She’d like to have a fraction of the easy confidence that the other woman has. “I’m not that much younger than you.”
Clawhammer sighs, tendrils of hair moving with the motion, “Yeah but Ghoul keeps you out of the messy shit.” She sees the sour look on Grace’s face and continues, “It’s a good thing, having someone to keep you in check and keep you out of the messy shit. That’s the stuff that makes you mean. The stuff that gets you hurt or killed, the stuff that kills your hope.” Grace ponders her words - Is that what happened to Ghoul? To Clawhammer and her team? To Val? To everyone but Grace? Is that what would happen to her eventually; her hope dying because of the world?
She didn’t know, she would never know if she was never allowed to venture out of the box that Ghoul kept her in. Now was not the time to get into that though. Now was the time to sit and feel jealous of all those who were currently basking in Jet Star’s attention. “Take it from me, stay a kid a while longer.” Clawhammer says. “Once you grow up you can’t go back. Age is a one way train.”
“Ok.” Grace says, because she can’t think of anything else to say. Clawhammer shifts the topic then in that easy way she has. She plays fashion bingo, and then when Cottonmouth doesn’t complain a second time they play bad-fashion bingo. It’s more like a guessing game than bingo but Grace isn’t going to critique the name. She points out people with bad dye-jobs or shoes that don’t work with their jackets. She laughs when Cottonmouth compares a blonde man with a rat tail to some comic character she doesn’t know, simply because everyone else is laughing. She feels like a part of the group in a way that she knows is going to leave her with a dull ache in her chest when the others load up into their van and leave her behind. She’s not really a part of their group, and she doesn’t know if she would really fit, but right now she wants so badly to be one of them.
They sit there until the sun goes from the mid-day high point to lower. They sit there until Grace’s soda is long gone and Dust Storm has had to bring them all water from the back of the van so they don’t sweat themselves to death. Clawhammer pulls off her poncho to reveal a dinky tank top that probably used to be white and Cottonmouth rolls her sleeves up enough that Grace can see the black-line tattoos that crawl up her tanned skin. She sits there long enough to study the way that Cottonmouth casts a sidelong look at Clawhammer every time the blonde isn’t looking. Long enough to start to categorize the yearning in the dark-haired woman’s eyes and settle once and for all that there is something between them - at least for Cottonmouth - though she’s not sure that Clawhammer even knows.
She stays there for long enough, feeling comforted by their presence enough that she lets her guard down. It raises again the instant that she sees a familiar car crest over the road leading to the outpost, red hair blowing in the wind in the driver’s seat. It could be Party Poison’s ghost, though she remember’s Clawhammer’s warning about Val wanting to buy the Trans-am and knows immediately who it is. Once it gets close enough she can see - with a flash of pain - that the spider logo on the front has been sanded off and replaced. Now the hood has a lightning bolt logo, with a red and blue crisscross like Val’s own mask. It’s an arrogant move, one that makes Grace’s blood boil.
How dare he dress like Party, how dare he deface their old car and fully claim it as his own, how dare he show up here like this.
She hates him. She thinks she might have hated him the whole time.
Clawhammer and Cottonmouth both glare at the car, Dust Storm even goes as far as spitting in its direction as Val parks it. It’s the most emotion Grace has seen him show so far. She wants to join him, to spit right in Val’s face and tell him that he’ll never replace Party Poison, that he and his repainted car should leave before Jet and Ghoul see it. She knows that seeing the car like this would only cause them more pain. That was the car that Ghoul loved so much, the car that Jet had saved the money from his first jobs as a teenager to buy. Val might own it now, but everyone knew that it was theirs first.
“Nice ride” Clawhammer calls out as soon as he gets into earshot. Her voice is mocking. Grace doesn’t expect Val to rise to the bait, but he smirks instead, proud of himself.
“I know, right? Cost me quite a bit.” he gloats. He gives Grace a pointed look, “It fits me though, doesn’t it.”
“Like a boy playing dress up.” Cottonmouth quips, “Trying to fill shoes 3 sizes too big.”
Val’s smirk falls. “Where is he, girl?” He asks Grace, “Jet Star.”
Grace waves towards the packed outpost. “Get in line.”
“Go get him for me. I think we need to get properly acquainted.” Val’s voice drips with venom. Grace thinks that he really expects her to run off and do his bidding. The rest of the people he surrounds himself with might bend to his every whim like that, but she won’t.
So she sets her jaw and levels a glare at him. “I don’t work for you. Go find him yourself.” Val somehow manages to look more pissed off at that. Clawhammer sits up straighter in front of Grace, like she’s waiting for a fight. Like she’ll fight for Grace. It’s a far cry from how it felt to run with Val, like Grace was on her own. It’s like what a real team should feel like, she thinks Jet would approve. Speaking of Jet, she has one last thing to say to Val, “Besides, you’ve already met him. Can’t say he’s much of a fan of you.”
His eyes go wide, “The prisoner.” he narrows his gaze behind his mask, “You knew, didn’t you. You didn’t tell me on purpose.” Grace doesn’t know where he got that thought from, but she’s not going to admit that she didn’t recognize her old friend to him of all people. Let him think she was conspiring against him, she doesn’t care. But Val does, his cheeks take that pink tint they always do when he’s angry. “I led that mission! I led the attack that freed him! I think I deserve a little bit of thanks for that.”
“You wanted to leave him behind. You didn’t look at him twice. If I wasn’t with you he’d still be in that cell.” Grace is almost yelling, in front of her Clawhammer and Cottonmouth have both gone tight like a drawn bow. They’re anticipating a fight, because things with Val Velocity are always a fight. “You’re nothing but a coward, and he knows it.” Grace says, hoping that her voice is strong enough to bite.
Val opens his mouth, like he’s about to try and fight back but instead Grace’s favorite voice cuts through the desert with fury. “What the fuck did you do to my car?” She turns to see Ghoul, walking as fast as his leg allows towards the group with Jet Star on his heels, both wearing matching looks of anger at Val and what he’s done to the Trans-am. If this is going to be a fight, Grace thinks, Val is going to be getting a lot more than he anticipated.