DERAILMENT;
It would be so great
if it could rain forever.

LAW OF HOLES: The first law of holes is if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
                                   The second law of holes is when you stop digging, you are still in a hole.

ON LOOKING BACK AND LOVE

Ovid, The Story of Orpheus and Eurydice / Hayao Miyazaki, Spirited Away / Supernatural Season 6 Episode 20: The Man Who Would Be King / Hozier, Talk / Hayao Miyazaki, Spirited Away / The Japanese House, Baby goes again / Robin 80th Anniversary 100-page Super Spectacular (2020) / Celine Song, Past Lives

I suppose in the end, the whole of life becomes an act of letting go, but what always hurts the most is not taking a moment to say goodbye.

Yann Martel, Life of Pi

Lucie Carlyle runs. The raw beat of Gotham's street under her feet is like a sickening heartbeat. She runs and runs and runs ─ there is no safety here, not in this city. Not in the city that stole her parents twelve years ago. Not in the city that fights to steal her best friend now. Two narratives co-exist in Lucie's brain: First is a memory of her mother fighting off thugs and scientists, Lucie barefoot on a tiled floor, and all around her is a white room. The second is the present: Eli Lovelace, her best friend, screaming at her to run. Run out of her house, out of this alley, out into the streets of Gotham that pierce into your armor and hold you captive in chains. There is no escape, not from the street life of Gotham, not from the life of Lucie Carlyle.

She runs.

Her life is only half-remembered ─ a girl born for Light. In the deepest oceans, there is a blackness so dark that creatures covet light like salvation. It becomes a lure for prey. In the stories told to her, she is always someone made for something. The ghosts don't know what Lucie was made for. Lucie doesn't know what she was made for.

She runs. Wolves chase after her.

Lucie was made for Light. Lucie was made to lure. Lucie was made to be hunted by beasts of prey to satiate a hunger that she does not understand. Eli Lovelace fights with the wolves that hunt after her ─ has been fighting them for the past three years. But the wolves always find her. He forgets that Lucie was made with a muscle, the size of a fist, and they called it: HEART. When Lucie bears her teeth, she is all heart. When he tells her to run he is all fists.

Run, Lucie. Run.

And Lucie runs. She runs again. There is one thing that people forget in stories like these: Girls and wolves, both have sharp teeth. If Lucie was made for Light; if she was made in the image of Light, then she would become the greatest lure known to man. A gas lamp for the moths. A siren for the sailors. Pain; she would cultivate it. Sow it under everyone's skin once she stops running.

When will she stop running? The fluttering note in her hand spells out her destination: 65 Anslow Lane. Who knows if they cage wolves there or domesticate them? If she bares her teeth at them will they call her a girl?

There are secrets this wolf hides ─ it bites the hand that feeds it. No one stays for long anyway. What's the point of niceties? Desperation makes animals of us all. If she could die, she would. Occupy less space. Be less of an intrusion ─ less of a nuisance. A burden. The wrongness of her existence courses through her like a virus, spreading through her bloodstream. She can feel it, making her something alien. Something to be hunted. Something to be desired, coveted, possessed. Owned.

Her feet slap the asphalt in quick succession, not looking back ─ don't ever look back. She was taught that when she was younger. When you run, take nothing with you. Not even your name. Not even regret. When you leave, all that anyone is left with are memories. And memories are a killer. They suffocate you, poison you. An old way to extract poison out of the bloodstream is to slice open your skin. It's a race against time, which will kill you first ─ the poison or the blood loss. 

The answer is time. Memory is a trap of time. Forgetting is a curse, and so is remembering. 

And so Lucie runs. Against time. Against memory.

Start by pulling him out of the fire and hoping that he will forget the smell. He was supposed to be an angel but they took him from that light and turned him into something hungry, something that forgets what his hands are for when they aren't shaking. He will lose so much, and you will watch it all happen because you had him first, and you would let the world break its own neck if it means keeping him. Start by wiping the blood off of his chin and pretending to understand. Repeat to yourself "I won't leave you, I won't leave you" until you fall asleep and dream of the place where nothing is red.

Caitlyn Siehl, Start Here

Kennedy McMann . . . . LUCIE CARLYLE

GHOSTWITCH / LADY LAZARUS 

Lin Yi . . . . GU XUN / ROMAN WARNER

BLACK ROOK

Ruby Cruz . . . . JULIEN "JULES" VERNE

CYPHER

. . . . and

Moon Sang-min . . . . HAL LEVITT-MOON

Anna Sawai . . . . YUME TANAKA

STARLING

Kim Seon Ho . . . . KANG SU-JIN

. . . . with

Gu Weiyi / Alec Warner . . . . WAXWING

Dick Grayson . . . . NIGHTWING

Tim Drake . . . . ROBIN

Cassandra "Moonday" Pryor

Eli Lovelace . . . . ROGUE

Wally West . . . . KID FLASH

Carys Wynn-Jones . . . . SHADOW

Dean Hauer-King . . . . BLINK

Artemis Crock . . . . TIGRESS

Connor Kent . . . . SUPERBOY

Roy Harper . . . . SPEEDY / ARSENAL / RED ARROW

. . . . featuring

ADA Andrew Warner

ADA Yvonne Tuinstra

Detective Enzo Carney

Dr. Stephanie Fray

Dr. Sayuri Kang

DISCLAIMER / AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Content Warning: Canon typical violence, character death, graphic description of death, blood, injury, murder, crime, suicide attempts, child abuse/neglect (referenced or otherwise), mental illness, alcohol abuse, religious conflict, nightmares, and terrible family dynamics. Time travel and manipulation. Existentialism and nihilism.

✩ Hello everyone! Welcome to Derailment, the product of my batfam and young justice obsessions. For obvious reasons, this book will not be any canon timelines since they get so confusing sometimes that I get lost. Instead, in this book's timeline I will pull stuff from both Earth-16 (yj! earth) and other worlds to make up the story.

✩ The story starts with the Team fractured and focuses a lot on the loss of friendship, loneliness and guilt. There is a lot of grief in this story about how you also lose a part of yourself when you lose a friend. The characters are aged up, for ex: Dick Grayson is already Nightwing in Bludhaven and about 25 years old. This will be a mature take on the Team and how each of them has dealt with grief and loss. Also, Tim Drake is the current Robin, and no Damian introduction yet. Although I love Bruce and the Justice League team, I don't think they'll show up much. This story will mostly be contained between this broken friendship group.

✩ Lucie is my special little girl. She is named after the main character from The Lockwood & Co. series (book and show). Her character arc mostly focuses on trying to understand herself and her past and trying to separate herself from her "makers", as to put it. 

✩ Roman or Gu Xun's arc focuses mostly on guilt, failure, and a loss of purpose. There is a sense of tiredness to him that makes it really difficult for me to write him, just because it is so real. Since Gu Xun has already experienced the loss of a friend, Lucie sees him as someone who understands her purely. They both will help each other throughout the story, even sometimes obsessively by going too far, but that is all for later.

✩ Also to address the LOSS of the story ─ similar to the Earth-16 timeline, our beloved speedster is gone. This already brings in some time travel themes, though they will also be explored through Gu Xun's powers which have been inspired and adapted from the character Bok Gwi-ju of the Netflix show The Atypical Family. WARNING: Speedforce fuckery ahead! It might not be all 100% canon in how it works but hey if DC doesn't know what it does then I can do whatever I want with it.

✩ Lucie's powers on the other hand are a product of my fascination with dionesium and further exploration into the causes and effects of it. It kind of plays the role of vibranium like in Marvel with Vision, as additional research and experimentation has led it to be tested on humans. Its effects will be explored with Lucie with a stretch of our vivid, vivid imagination! Lucie although thinking she is hiding this secret of unkilliable-ness will be forced to confront it later when a crisis arises. eesh.

✩ This story, again, explores relationship dynamics more so than it is plot-centered. I really love this one, it's my baby.

SHOULD WE LOSE EACH OTHER IN THE SHADOW OF THE EVENING TREES, I WILL WAIT FOR YOU. AND SHOULD I FALL BEHIND, WAIT FOR ME.

──── Derailment. 2024.