A/N: Sorry for the delay. I've been on a work trip for a week.
When the Universe was new, and no world knew Rage, there were two brothers: A Tiller of the Soil and a Keeper of Flocks.
They both offered the fruits of their labor to the Sky, but while the smoke from one offering rose straight and true; the other's drifted low, scattered by a wind of discontent…
Again and again, He presented his tribute;
Again and again, His was rejected with neither an explanation nor an acknowledgement, until the Heart of the Spurned began to sprout new, bitter Seeds.
What began as Reverence for the Vast Expanse soon soured into Dejection.
The resulting Sorrow stood no chance against His Defiance.
And when He looked upon his brother, the Love He once knew had curdled on his tongue, leaving only the ashen aftertaste of Hate…
It was from that very Hatethat a Fire was born.
One day, he led his brother into a quiet field where the earth was soft, and there, He introduced the Concept of Murder to their kind. From the First Murderer's cry—a sound not of grief, but of hateful justification—a new Power was given form, taking the shape of a Great and Terrible Bull.
It was Named 'The Butcher,' for it was born of slaughtered kin.
Untethered, it wandered the nascent realities, a Specter of pure Rage seeking a Vessel.
It whispered to the Wrath of God himself, tempting The Spectre to turn his righteous duty into boundless, indiscriminate Wrath.
This act soon drew the eye of the Guardians on Oa.
Fearing this unbound Emotional Entity, they made it a prison of Will, sealing the Entity away forevermore. For eons, 'The Butcher'… The Bull slumbered, desperate to again feel a Rage as pure and potent as its birthright until it sensed Atrocitus the Inversion: One of the rare, rare few survivors of Sector 666,
The Killer of Manhunters,
And He-Who-Still-Mourned the trillions of massacred Souls in his Space Sector;
Here was a being who did not flee from his pain, but embraced it; who pleaded with the Universe each day to sharpen the memory of his loss and stoke his Rage.
In this perfect, all-consuming hatred, The Butcher found its first true home. It did not infest his mind as the Yellow Impurity of Fear would; it anointed him, and in that Baptism, it whispered.
It told him to kill the others.
To draw Blood from their freshly-dead corpses.
And to forge, from that carnage, the First Central Red Lantern Battery in the Universe.
And so, Atrocitus became its Embodiment in the Materium—the Prophet and Messenger for the Entity's voiceless Rage.
He became the First Red Lantern.
Ever since that first roar of Treachery, countless have burned with anger, but only a select few have ever resonated with The Butcher's Rage… None had truly met its requirements, none except the Wrath of God whose Presence radiated Fury it so craved;
None save Atrocitus whose ceaseless grief could dye whole galaxies crimson;
And now, none other than the Half-Fiend whose Heart it sought to consume, and Soul to baptize.
Yet, the deeper 'The Butcher' ventured, the more obvious to it that it wasn't alone…
There was something else in here with it, the Source of the Demon's powers and, presumably, his Rage Incarnate. It had met the other Emotional Entities before, but the Beast that welcomed it at the door still gave it pause.
Silently, the Great Bull and the Terrible Stag measured each other.
They did not circle as mere Beasts do; they orbited one another, two gravities of Ruinous Powers caught in a deadlock, each waiting for the other to yield a ground never meant to be shared. There was no ring of a bell, no drunken cheers from sweaty fans… Only the raw, world-shattering bellow that tore from the Butcher's throat.
The Bull charged.
The Stag did not meet it. Unlike the mindless Primal Aspect of Mortal Rage; it was Evil Incarnate, and Evil came in many, many forms. Forms beyond even fury.
Ichor knew it couldn't win a contest of strength. Not while it remained bound while its foe ran free as a bird. Anywhere else, it might have slunk back into the Dark, but this was its Domain. Its land! Its Soul! And with that came a homefield advantage the Conduit of Rage naturally lacked.
Its four eyes flared with Magic so tainted it could reshape the Earth, and four beams lanced out as a result, twisting midair into a single devastating spire.
The Bull answered the only way it knew how: With a stream of Corrosive Blood spewed from its maw.
Evil met Rage.
The spire held for a bare second before—predictably—dissolving with a hiss, devoured by the crimson tide as the Bull's stampeding hooves brought the fight ever closer to Ichor, who in turn melded into the Shadows cast by crimson, crystalized trees.
The Stag already had what it needed, mainly the measure of the intruding Beast, and after that display, it'd be a fool to meet The Butcher head-on.
The Butcher let loose a single sound that seemed to carry every shade of Cowardice ever known to Existence, and stomped where Ichor had been a nanosecond earlier.
Unbothered by the insult, the Stag extended its Crown past the Veil it lurked behind, and the Dark obeyed, reshaping into gnarled imitations of its antlers.
Wherever the Dark stretched, so too did the spires of Fel Magic as they tore into the Butcher's crimson hide. The Magic drew blood immediately—thin, weeping lines that were more insult than injury. Cuts the Bull shrugged off with contempt as it plowed through the crystalized forest.
Inside his Soul, Gods clashed—Rage and Evil tearing at each other, and at the seams of his Mind.
It was a war worth a hundred Epics!
But on the cold, debris-strewn floor of the Materium, there was no God in sight, only the suffering Vessel caught between the Forces. Kneeling on loose bricks and pebbles, Rowan stared at the ground, breathing in short, rapid bursts to calm his Rage.
Bruce had beaten a hundred lessons on emotional control into his bones. Logic over Impulse. Strategy over Rage. A hundred perfect rules for a world that was anything but.
Now, if he could just remember one, life would be peachy… Finally, Rowan lifted his head, hellish eyes sweeping the wreckage, before landing on a familiar pair of boots. "Well, well, lookie here! The prodigal son, brought to his lowest! Still playing dress-up, are we, boy?"
Some small, screaming part of his mind—the part that still sounded like Bruce—knew this was but a phantom dug up by the Red Lantern Ring, but logic meant very little in the face of that grin. The person might not be real, but the hate was… The shame was… And it demanded blood.
"R-Reuben!"
Coughing up a mouthful, the Imp braced himself against the adjacent wall and dragged his battered body toward the doorframe, led by the Apparition, who was hell-bent on mocking him at every step and turn.
"Atta boy! Look at you go! Uncle Grin's so proud!"
He lunged, crimson leaking from the Ring-bored wound in his chest.
He should know better than to feed the Entity, but no amount of 3A.M flame wars could've prepared a mortal for The Butcher's eon-honed Ragebaiting. The door slammed shut just as Rowan reached it, rattling his eardrums as he pounded on the flimsy wood that should have given, and yet didn't.
It took a while, but the ringing in his ears finally faded, giving way to an eerie silence, broken only by distant hammering and the faint sound of someone, multiple someones crying while red light spilled through the crack beneath the door.
Then the cries grew louder, and the sobs more frantic. "Why the long face, champ? You had no issue with this back then!"
Accompanying Reuben's voice were the cries of a teen. It sounded older than Grin's usual demographic, but the panic behind it was something he was intimately familiar with. It was something he'd once ignored in favor of survival.
"Open up and face me, you sack of shit!" A maddening itch thrummed beneath his gums as Rowan snarled and threw his entire weight at the door like a feral animal. The door merely rattled. He wasn't sure if it was his own punch, or Reuben's baseball bat on the other side that had probably just broken a boy's leg.
Legs had always been Grin's favorite. The bastard never said it outright, but Rowan could tell nothing amused him more than watching someone limp past… It was the only time the smile ever truly reached his eyes.
"Fuck—" He punched again, and from behind the door, the wet smack of a baseball bat answered him.Rowan roared as his knuckles split, immediately switching to his elbow next. "OPEN UP!"
When the ache finally pushed him past his limit, he positioned his shoulder at the door.
And when that failed as well, he turned to the last thing he had—his head.
He did not use it wisely as taught by the Dark Knight.
But violently. Repeatedly… Until red started to seep into his eyes.
Before he could crack his skull against the door, it burst inward, revealing Grin with his trusty, bloodied bat. The weapon splintered against Rowan's jaw, sending him flying across the room and off the balcony, his lower jaw hanging nearly loose as he finally came to and realized he'd long left the apartment, and was currently plummeting from the stratosphere.
Rowan blinked, the shimmering Rage flaring again as a golden lasso wrapped tightly around him. "I am Diana of Themyscira, and I demand you, Hellspawn, to describe our surroundings!"
At Wonder Woman's command, he nearly blurted everything out: The burning sky, the humanoid shapes shrieking below, and the grotesque face she wore despite her feminine form.
This was the first and—if God was good—preferably the last time he'd suffer the displeasure of seeing Reuben's ugly fucking mug on her. By the Presence, it had to be. Thankfully, the hallucinations began to die as her command took hold, forcing upon Rowan clarity.
Gone were the howling silhouettes wreathed in eternal flame… Gone was the red door that always lingered in the corner of his eye… And gone was Reuben, replaced by a smoking-hot Amazonian Princess with one boot on his chest and a sword to his throat, ready to end him if he so much as twitched the wrong way. "What do you see?!"
Rowan stared at her thighs—her toned, olive-skinned, and unreasonably smooth thighs, and sighed. There were worse ways to die, forsho… "A Goddess."
Of course, Hal Jordan had to pick that exact moment to interfere, his arrival announced by a flare of emerald light, the crunch of polished boots striking the soil at terminal velocity, and a panicked scream. "Wait, Wonder Woman! He will die without the—!"
The fucking cockblocker.
A whole list of names were already being conjured in his mind when the Rage Entity decided to expel Corrosive Blood from Rowan's every orifice, converted from what the Entity could leech from him.
The Napalm splattered all over the ground, sizzling as it ate through massive chunks of earth… Fortunately, none of the toxic spray reached the Space Cop or the Warrior Princess.
"GET AWAY!" Rowan roared, thrashing in his bindings as he shot a venomous glare at the Lantern Ring on his finger, then at the crimson uniform wrapped around him like a Curse. He knew how this ended… Greater men than him had tried to wield Rage, and failed miserably.
"Green Lantern!" Rowan gasped, urgency stripping the stutter clean. "How much do you know about human anatomy?!"
Hal blinked, his emerald Construct wavering mid-air. "What? Kid, I fly jets, I don't—"
"The Ring replaced my heart with a—"
Rowan choked, arms thrashing against the allegedly unbreakable Lasso.
"A CONSTRUCT! It remade my heart! If I take it off, I die!"
Hal's eyes shot from Rowan's chest, then to the pouch of Red Rings buzzing inside his Containment Field—souvenirs he'd caught after they abandoned their Wielders. "A heart?! Kid, that's biological! My Ring does jets and cannons and giant green fists! It doesn't do CARDIAC!"
"It does now. I'm entrusting you with my life. Fail me, and I will haunt you for all eternity." The Demon growled, turning to an awestruck Wonder Woman. "Release me… Lend me your sword, and I'll be forever in your debt, Your Highness."
"Why do you wish to borrow my sword?" Asked the Princess of Themyscira.
His gaze dropped to the crimson ring, then back to her; a terrible, blood-flecked grin stretching his lips. "Because something tells me this isn't gonna come off if I just ask nicely." Hal Jordan recoiled, the implication hitting him a second after it landed with the stone-faced Amazon.
"And now you wanna chop your finger off too?" Hal yelled, gesturing wildly. "Kid, are you out of your mind?!"
Rowan's head whipped toward the panicked Space Cop, his own eyes blazing with a furious, manic gleam. "Oh, grow a PAIR, will you? Jesus H. Christ! LOCK THE FUCK IN!"
Frustrated, but far from being illogically enraged, he reached for the hilt reluctantly offered by a tense Wonder Woman after a brief pause. "If you need a hand—"
"Nah… I'm not putting that on you. And besides, it's just a finger." Responded Rowan, forcing a casual tone that felt alien on his own tongue.
'It's just a disposable piece of flesh.' He told himself, aiming the sword at his hand. 'Bruce or Zatara can have it reattached in no time.'
Worst case scenario, he'd lose a finger.
Rowan could live with that.
The real problem was the biological Construct currently doing the job of his heart.
'If Hal screwed up...'
Even knowing Death was basically a revolving door in this Universe, the Demon wasn't exactly keen on finding out what Hell was like this season. The thought shot a violent tremor through his hand born of pure, animalistic terror at his own imminent demise. With a beastly snarl, Rowan embraced the Rage, for once grateful toward the Emotion since this entire mess began.
"Shouldn't we go to the hospital fo—?" Hal started, only for the rest of his medically-sound objections to wither under Rowan's patented Batglare™.
The Entity wanted Rage?
Fine.
It could have his—all of it.
Moments before Diana's reassuring hand could rest on top of his, Rowan drove the blade down, cracking a tooth from sheer grit as he did. "Get out of my head, motherfucker!" The Divine Metal found not flesh, but a shrieking barrier of crimson light that erupted from the Ring. "Get off!"
He stabbed again, blood dripping down his gums and dyeing his teeth. "Off! Off!!! OFF!!!"
Meanwhile, within the wasteland that was Rowan's Mindscape, the battle was all but over. Writhing under The Butcher's hooves, Ichor snapped and snipped, pulling upon what little remained of its dwindling Fel.
The Magic sputtered against the Bull's hide, doing next to nothing, and accomplishing even less.
It couldn't be helped.
One was a Cosmic Entity older than most Stars in the Universe; the other was a Nascent Demon still shackled by Seals weaved as one. The difference in their very Existence was less a gap to be closed, and more an ocean to drown in—an ocean Rowan was continuously draining with each jab.
Angered, the Butcher looked up.
That brief lapse in focus was exactly what Ichor needed.
It lunged, sinking serrated fangs into the Bull's throat. Most shattered on impact; others jammed back into its own gums from the bedrock it had bitten into, but a few found purchase, puncturing deep enough to slather Corrosive Blood across the Stag's elongated tongue.
With each swallow, the wild power was further refined into a quieter, more insidious Fel energy that began to knit Ichor's tattered form back together.
Enraged by the parasitic drain, The Butcher slammed its hoof down.
The god-shattering blow descended, proving as futile as the ones before it, for everything except the Stag's head and neck had already been flattened, its ancient hide rendered to a slick smear, and a Shade, after all, could not be broken… Stretched, on the other hand…
Inch by inch, the Bull swelled, and Ichor with it, but to gorge its Dimensions to such a scale demanded more Magic than the Stag could possibly spare while still attempting to repair itself. This immense Cost left Ichor dimmed and thinned and clinging to Existence, yet it'd not let go!
And just when its Core Essence neared its breaking point, Divine Metal plunged into The Butcher's chest!
Outside the Mindscape, Rowan plunged the blade up to its hilt through the Power Ring and choked down a howl as the Red Light of Rage erupted from the Artifact, carving a scar across the sky.
"Oh, fuc—"
Inside, the Butcher scattered into a flock of Ravens, but before it could make its escape, the Stag lunged, munching down on one and cackling maniacally as it attempted to mince the Construct between its chompers, then gave up and swallowed its prey whole.
Ichor snorted, spraying a wet, bloody mouthful, before returning to its usual size while the Mindscape around it began to collapse further.
Victory was theirs, alas, it'd exacted a heavy toll. Now freed from the constant onsets of illogical Rage, Rowan breathed a sigh of relief which lasted no more than three seconds; cut short the instant the Red Lantern Construct in his chest dissolved.
A sudden, hollow lurch in his chest made Rowan cry out, hand flying to his sternum to find that steady, lifelong drumming gone.
He thrashed wildly, gasping and choking while the potent Lifeforce borne of his Heritage tried to compensate for the sudden loss, but even it could only do so much.
"Hang on, kid!" The Green Lantern reassured, raising his fist to form what appeared to be a beating heart. 'Appeared,' being the keyword, for that was all the Construct was capable of… It did not beat; it could not pulse, and it sure as hell wasn't about to take over as a functioning organ.
The Construct was, for all intents and purposes, a heart-shaped trinket—nothing more.
"What's the matter, Green Warrior? Is that the best you can conjure? The boy's life is at stake!" Rowan doubted the Amazon Princess meant to sound so antagonistic, but it mattered little to the glowing Space Cop.
"I'm trying, alright? My Ring's not built to replicate living tissue, and I have no idea how a heart works! If you do, please, by all means, chime in, Princess!"
"C-Cybernetic heart!" The Demon wheezed, stepping in before things could get heated between the heroes. They'd walk away with hurt feelings at worst; he wouldn't walk away at all. "A-Ask your Ring's AI for blueprints, you dolt!"
By the Presence! Must he do everything himself?!
Hal'a panic-addled brain finally caught up to the obvious. "Ring, search: Blueprints for a cybernetic heart!"
[Answer: ONE MILLION, NINE HUNDRED FIFTEEN THOUSAND, ONE HUNDRED EIGHTY-TWO RESULTS FOUND.]
Sweat beading on his brow, Hal barked, "Pick the best one! Something that'll work for a human!" The useless, heart-shaped trinket of light vanished, and in its place, a single, hyper-detailed holographic schematic bloomed.
[Suggestion: KHERA-CLASS ARTIFICIAL CARDIAC PUMP. COMPATIBILITY WITH TERRAN PHYSIOLOGY: High.]
"Execute!" The Space Cop bellowed, thrusting his fist forward and pouring every ounce of Will into his Ring.
To their collective relief, the hazy schematic slowly solidified, condensing into an organ of wires and circuitry rather than flesh and blood vessels. With a grunt, Green Lantern carefully guided the Construct forth. It phased through Rowan's chest effortlessly, settling into the void where his heart had been.
They both knew it wasn't a permanent fix.
The space cop would have to sleep eventually, and without his Willpower to sustain it, the makeshift cybernetic would collapse just as the Red Lantern Ring had. For now, though, it'd do. It had to. "Y-You doing alright, kid?"
Releasing a breathless chuckle, Rowan dropped like a sack of cement. "I have a name, you know."
"How may we address you, Child of Tartarus?"
"What, no 'Hellspawn' this time? That's a bummer."
Diana cleared her throat, almost as if she was embarrassed by her earlier behavior.
"My preferred pronouns are 'Hubby' or 'Husband,' but Imp works too."
Green Lantern tasted, chewed, then spat out the alias in disbelief. "You mean Gotham's Imp? The Shadow Demon that supposedly works for their resident Vampire? That Imp?!"
"Batman's not a Vampire." Said 'Shadow Demon' corrected.
"Are you sure?"
"Don't you fucking start!" Tossing a half-lidded gaze in the Space Cop's direction, Rowan deliriously fumed. "It's not even the same Verse! You don't even belong in that fucking Archetype!"
"What are you rambling about?! Never mind, how do I call your… Dad, Hubby?"
"Don't be fucking gross, Lantern, and he's not my dad either."
After a bit of back-and-forth, Rowan finally gave Hal Bruce's number, but by the time the Dark Knight decided to deign the three with his presence, he was already pale, tremoring and unconscious from blood loss.
"—Who's this? How did you get this number?"
"Hey, Bat? This is Green Lantern, I've got your… Kid."
"—What?"
"White hair, purple eyes with an attitude, a mouth to match and calls himself 'The Imp'—is this ringing any bell?"
.
.
.
Somewhere in California, nestled between a vape shop and a laundromat whose dryers always sounded like they were chewing on a pile of gravel, sat a storefront.
The paint on its frame was a shade of purple so dark it was almost black, peeling in places to reveal wood far older than the surrounding brickwork. There was no gaudy neon, no name painted on the glass, only a single, faded glyph of an open palm etched into the door.
The display windows, meanwhile, were blinded with dust and dark velvet, promising nothing and revealing even less.
A trio of old brass bells announced the Magician's arrival as he entered, covering his nose at the stale scent of old paper, dried lavender, and a faint tang that just sat at the end of one's tongue. To both sides, shelves overflowed with books whose spines were not made of mere cowhide, and jars which held things that, every once in a while, in the corner of his eye, still seemed to twitch.
"You took your time…"
"Forgive me. Your door does not always appear for those who knock, Madame." Zatara greeted, removing his tophat. It was less a sign of etiquette, and more a gesture of respect for a Power that predated his family name by millennia.
"It appears for those who have need of it, Giovanni," The Soothsayer replied. "And your need is great."
"So you're aware of—"
"Let's dispense with the obvious, Zatara. You would not be on my doorstep otherwise. Enter," The Witch slowly gestured at the beaded curtain leading into the inner sanctum of her modest sanctuary, colorful bracelets seeming to shine for the briefest moment as his eyes met her blindfold. "The matter of the Son of Trigon cannot wait."