Milk_Is_My_Drug
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Chapter 50: A Way Home
🕑 Added 2025-05-29 07:26:05 +0000 UTCThe creaking remains of the Watchtower groaned softly under Kara’s hesitant steps. Ashborn followed behind silently, his eyes scanning the place. Inside, the structure was a ghost of its former glory, dark corridors, shattered panels, dust layering every surface like ancient ash.
Kara’s face twisted with fear and despair as she rushed to the central console. Her fingers danced over the cracked glass, bringing up faint screens, blinking red with warning after warning. Desperate, she searched for answers. But all she found was silence.
A mechanical voice crackled to life. "Power at critical level. Entering sleep mode in 60 seconds."
“No!” Kara slammed her fist into the terminal. “What happened here?!”
Ashborn said nothing. His eyes weren’t on the dead console but staring into the dark. Why wasn’t Savage here? Shouldn’t he be lurking around the Watchtower? Could it be that he didn’t pick up on their signal?
Silently, he extended his shadows, ordering them to slither across the base and fan out across the land.
Kara turned to him, her voice trembling. “What should we do? We’re all alone here…”
Ashborn turned slightly toward her. “We rest. Then we search. We’ll look for intelligent life. There has to be something around here.”
Kara gave a faint nod. Then—
"Entering sleep mode. Date: 77,034 AC."
The system's voice echoed like a final breath before death. Kara’s body went rigid.
“Did you hear that?” she whispered.
Ashborn gave a small nod. “If it’s correct… the beam didn’t send us to another world. We’re still on Earth. But it sent us forward, seventy-five thousand years.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “Not again… not again…”
Ashborn blinked. Her voice cracked with pain he didn’t expect.
“First Krypton… and now Earth…”
For a brief moment, he understood. She hadn’t moved on from Krypton. And now she believed she was reliving the same tragedy, watching another home fall into oblivion.
At that moment, one of his shadows had found him, Vandal Savage, tending a peaceful farm. He was only a day away from their current location.
Ashborn placed a firm hand on Kara’s shoulder.
“We got here. We can get back. The way in must have a way out. Let’s rest for a little. Then we’ll search.”
Kara didn’t reply. Instead, she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him, crying softly into his chest. Ashborn stood still, tempted to teleport them directly to Savage and end this heavy moment.
An hour later, they set out again.
Kara walked closer than usual, her red, swollen eyes casting glances at Ashborn every few steps, as if afraid he’d vanish too. Ashborn understood, this world had broken her walls, and she feared losing everything again.
The next day, they reached the outskirts of a broken city.
Or what was left of it.
Metropolis.
Kara slowed down. Her eyes moved across the ruins, skyscrapers collapsed into mountains of steel and concrete. What stopped her, what broke her again, was the shattered “S” emblem embedded into the ground—cracked and crumbling.
She fell to her knees and wept.
Ashborn gave her a moment before gently urging her forward. They walked in silence through the empty graveyard of a city, until they reached something strange.
A pristine building.
Surrounded by cultivated plants and neatly trimmed trees, the place stood like a sore thumb in a world that had been swallowed by time. Not abandoned. Maintained.
Ashborn narrowed his eyes. “This place doesn’t look like the rest. Someone’s living here.”
Kara wiped her eyes. “We should be careful… they might not be friendly.”
“Relax,” Ashborn replied. “Things will be okay. We’re not alone anymore.”
As if on cue, the front door opened. A man walked out, tall, composed, dressed in immaculate black. His expression shifted from calm to startled.
Kara took a step forward, her eyes narrowing.
“Savage!! What are you doing here?”
The man’s eyes widened. A chuckle escaped his lips, low and disbelieving “Well… I never thought I’d see another human face again. Not after all these tens of thousands of years.”
Ashborn’s eyes flicked from the neat fields to the stoic face of Vandal Savage. A wry smile tugged at his lips.
“Being an immortal,” he said casually, “is quite the curse, isn’t it?”
He paused for a moment then continued. “So… care to tell us what we missed these past seventy-five thousand years? How did the world end like this?”
Savage let out a long, heavy sigh, one that carried the weight of millennia.
“This is my fault,” he admitted. “I created a device to control gravitational force, a device meant to help me become the master of the world. But instead… I broke the world. Everything unraveled. Civilization collapsed. And I’ve been alone ever since.”
“What about the Justice League? They would have never allowed that to happen” Kara asked with narrowed eyes.
Savage showed a nostalgic and sad look as he replied “True, they tried to stop me, but I was prepared and kill them all”
His words shocked Kara, but before she could say anything, Savage continued, his eyes flicking between the two of them. “Who are you?”
Ashborn replied “Ashborn Black. And this is Supergirl.”
At the mention of her name, something flickered in Savage’s eyes, recognition, buried deep and long forgotten.
“So… Toyman, that fool, created a beam to send things into the future…” he murmured. “He didn’t realize what he created to the very end”
“Seems to be the case,” Ashborn replied.
Savage straightened, shaking off the haze of old memories. “Forgive my poor manners,” he said, gesturing toward the door. “Please, come inside.”
Ashborn stepped forward without hesitation, but Kara reached out and grabbed his hand.
“We can’t trust him,” she whispered, eyes locked on Savage. “If what he said is true… this is all his fault.”
Ashborn glanced at her with a small smirk. “He’s been alone for seventy-five thousand years, Kara. I think he’s dying to talk to someone.”
Savage glanced back and chuckled. “You’re surprisingly calm about all of this, Ashborn.”
Ashborn grinned. “Panic and anger are pointless and having nerves of steel helps”
He gently tugged Kara’s hand, pulling her to follow him. She relented, but the suspicion never left her face. Her eyes stayed fixed on Savage’s every move.
Ashborn, on the other hand, acted like he was meeting an old friend. As they stepped into the pristine home, filled with handmade furniture, towering shelves of books, and relics from the ancient world, he asked, “So what have you been doing, all this time?”
Savage’s face lit up, eager to speak after so long.
“I re-discovered agriculture,” he said, leading them inside. “Built new irrigation systems from scratch. Read every book I could find… multiple times. I even built a ship to leave Earth. But I stayed.”
“Why?” Ashborn asked.
“I thought… maybe this was my punishment,” Savage said, his voice quieter now. “Endless solitude. Time to think, to reflect. My past self, what he did, how he thought, I’ve come to hate him.”
Ashborn listened with a soft smile, nodding, occasionally asking questions that drew even more stories from the ancient man.
Kara watched silently from the edge of the room, arms crossed. Her blood boiled with every word. How could Ashborn smile? How could he talk to this man like they were old companions, like none of this mattered?
After a while, Savage stood. “Please, make yourselves comfortable. I’ll fetch some vegetables and fruit, we’ll eat together.”
Once he disappeared through the back door, Kara turned on Ashborn, her anger bursting free.
“How can you talk with him like that?!” she hissed. “How can you smile like nothing happened?! Everything is gone, everyone is dead! Even Savage shows more sorrow than you. And you, you look like you're enjoying this!”
Ashborn’s smile faded. He looked at her silently for a long moment. Then, he said quietly but firmly:
“Just because you see a smile… don’t think you know what’s going on underneath.”
His tone sharpened as he continued.
“A smile is a tool, Kara. It inspires your friends… keeps your enemies guessing… and most of all, it ensures that no matter what comes your way, you’re the one in control.”
Kara blinked, caught off guard. Her anger fizzled under the weight of his words. For a long moment, she stood in silence, staring at the floor.
“I’m sorry,” she finally said. “I won’t do that again.”
Ashborn’s smile returned “It’s fine. You’re stressed. Anyone would be, given everything.”
She nodded slowly, still processing, as quiet settled between them once more.
___________
Savage returned not long after, holding a basket filled with colorful vegetables and some tuberous roots that had clearly been cultivated with care.
“I’ll prepare lunch,” he said with a small grin. “And I’ll make sure it’s something you’ll both enjoy.”
“We are quite lucky, we are getting a meal prepared by the undisputed best cook for the last seventy-five thousand years ” Ashborn quipped.
Savage chuckled lightly.
As Savage began chopping the ingredients with practiced hands, Ashborn tilted his head curiously.
“So, tell me… seventy-five thousand years is a long time. Did you ever figure out a way to fix this place? All that solitude must have sparked some ideas.”
Savage’s motions slowed for a moment. “I did. For a while, I even worked on a time machine.”
Kara’s eyes widened slightly. Ashborn leaned in with interest.
“But I stopped,” Savage continued, “once I realized how pointless it was.”
He paused, glancing between them. “But now… with the two of you here… saving this world might not be as impossible as I once thought.”
Ashborn squinted, reading between the lines. “Do you have a plan?”
Savage turned, the ghost of a smile on his face. “Yes. The two of you… could repopulate the Earth.”
There was a beat of silence.
Kara’s cheeks turned a faint shade of pink, her eyes darting away. Ashborn’s face registered brief confusion, then disbelief.
“…That’s your first idea?” he asked, blinking. “you mentioned a time machine, and immediately after it you want to start a breeding program?”
Savage shrugged. “It’s a practical thought. Humanity can continue.”
Ashborn held up a hand. “Let’s shelve the new generation talk for now. Let’s rewind, if you can create a time machine, why is it really pointless?”
Savage stirred the pot over the fire, speaking more casually now. “Because I can’t return to a time where I already exist. That’s the paradox.”
Ashborn gave a pointed look. “You do realize that we’re not from this time, right? If you could send us back, we are the variables. We can stop this… before you screw it all up.”
Savage froze, the spoon hanging in mid-air. Slowly, he turned to Ashborn, eyes wide with realization.
“You’re right,” he whispered.
Ashborn grinned. “Living alone for that long isn’t an excuse to fill your head with breeding thoughts.”
Savage let out a bark of laughter, the weight on his shoulders seeming to lift for the first time in ages. “You’re right,” he said again, more alive than they had yet seen him. “After we eat, I’ll dig up my old notes. I’ll start working on the time machine again.”
This time, his voice was charged with energy, like a man reborn.
Kara looked to Ashborn, stunned, hope battling with disbelief in her eyes.
Ashborn met her gaze, the smallest of smiles tugging at the corners of his lips.
“Looks like we have a way back after all,” he said.
Comments
Gilgamos
Breed!
