He had expected the reaction, almost anticipated it. Yet, Clay couldn’t help but feel an odd mix of satisfaction and disappointment in the immediate look of awe and terror he could make out on Kid Rocket, or the barely disguised disgust of Catspaw.

It took everything he had not to pull the mask back on, but he had a point to make. The mask was for the others - the ones who needed the message that it sent. It was the first Kid Rocket would have seen his true face, which he’d worked his hardest to conceal in the six years since the kid had been given his old gig. It had been intentional. Despite how hardened he knew he’d become, something about the reaction always seemed to remind him of how he’d been…changed. 

It was why he’d learned to love the mask, almost seeing the black pullover with its twin goggles as the way he ought to be seen. It was so easy to to lose himself in it, his other self, in the face and name which some days felt almost more real than the one below. 

Eclipse, the necessary balance of darkness over light. It was who he was, who had he became from the moment of his revelation. He fought the urge to reach for his face, and absently trace at the borders of his scar, the memories bringing back the phantom pain. 

Still, Nathan was like a brother to him, and Catspaw for as little as he thought of her, seemed to have somehow fallen into the role of his guardian in the wake of the current bullshit. They needed a different sort of message, one only the face below would serve to underscore. 

The scarred one - the broken one. 

“Damn lil bro,” he muttered, “What? Ya’ll don’t think I’m pretty anymore?”

Clay smiled, and he could feel the uneasy way it tugged at his upper lip, a familiar pain as it curled his expression unevenly. 

“I - I knew…but I didn’t know how -?” Nathan breathed, and even from beneath the red and white mask over his eyes, Clay could almost see the expression of awe and horror in them.

Good. He needed to drive the point home, the kid was naive. 

His shoulders raised in a half-shrug, staring between the two as he looped his thumbs beneath his plate carrier, letting his arms hang to the sides.

He shook his head.

“I got educated.”

Nathan’s expression was a questioning one, his mouth falling open as if to speak, though nothing came. It was Catspaw to chime in.

“Who was it?” there was no emotion in the question but genuine curiosity, though he noticed her claws disappear in a sudden haze of light, her eyes meeting his through goggles alternating black and yellow.

“Same fucker that took the old man out,” he replied, tongue running over his teeth, a nervous tic he’d struggled with for some time.

“The Dancer. Say what you want about the fucker, but he’s -” he searched his mind for the appropriate word, anything too complimentary of the Dancer feeling all but poisonous.

“He’s a warrior.” That he could live with. 

It was the truth, not necessarily a compliment, but accurate. The Dancer was everything Clay had made it his mission to destroy. He was wanton cruelty, directionless and purposeless, aimed everywhere but at those who deserved it. But he was good, skilled to a staggering extent when it came to physical mastery over his body, and using it as a tool for the application of violence. He almost made an art form of it.

He was a monster, and Clay didn’t use the word lightly with how often it was tossed around, applied even to himself by many. Darkstar had been one of them, and the memory filled him with strangely conflicting emotions. 

Confusion, hurt, and anger, most present of all, familiar and comfortable anger which he allowed to envelop him against the unusual sting. He’d convinced himself he hated Anthony over the years and felt he had reason to. The man had raised Clay to be a weapon, a soldier in an unending war, and yet abandoned him after he’d been made to bear the scars, and learn the truth of the matter. The only way to truly stop the bad guys was to make sure they never got back up.

“I didn’t -” Nathan trailed, off a hand running absently through his hair as he searched for the necessary words.

“Fuck, I - I didn’t know how bad,” he muttered, then seeming to recall the situation at hand as his eyes met Boa’s corpse again, Clay could see the brows furrow beneath the red domino mask.

“You know what? It doesn’t matter. I’m sorry but, it doesn’t excuse,” he gestured down at the corpse of the villain, still splayed out between them. 

“THIS.”

Clay wanted to be mad, or indignant, but watching the boy before him struggling to maintain the codes of conduct left to him by a man who’d died because of it, he felt only pity. He still believed in the mission, Nathan, with all of his heart. The idea that, with willpower and morality they could hope to stave back the tide of darkness.

He shook his head. They didn’t get it though, the darkness, not truly. There was no curing it, or pushing it back far enough, no, there has only ever been one way to do away with the dark. Burn it out with the light, spread fire and fury amongst its reaches until even the lowliest shadow has been extinguished. 

Darkstar hadn’t understood that. For all of his undeniable genius, and skill, Clay knew there was one thing that had kept Anthony Neal from ever achieving perfection in his crusade against the evils that plagued their home like some reeking miasma - his unwillingness to see the job through. His morality. And it had cost him his life. 

Standing before Nathan, Clay could feel an odd, reversal of the usual nostalgia as he gazed back at the boy wearing a modernized version of the very costume he’d once worn, his expression hard with resolve, and something more…a belief, almost fanatic, that frightening Clay. It was the look of one unwilling to compromise even when the odds seemed to call for it, and it terrified him. Not for what it meant for himself, but for all it might lead Nathan into. 

He could feel that phantom pain at the center of his face, grimacing hard against the reminders it came with, that never too distant sensation of the blade as it had shattered bone and sliced through flesh, leaving him with an eternal reminder of his failure and near death.

“You don’t get it,” Clay breathed, voice hard as he leveled his gaze with Nathan’s, “And neither did the old man. And where did that get him, hmm?” He let the question linger for a moment, relishing in the shock that seemed to pass over the younger boy's features despite himself. 

“Fuck, where did it almost get you? You could’ve died tonight. And not even saving the city or stopping some calamity-tier threat like the Dancer or Barron fuckin’ Blackhand or anyone close. No, you almost got the shit choked out of you by Boa,” he practically spat the name/

“A two-bit, sad-sack fucking mercenary who gets paid by miserable, bitter husbands or wives to knock off their equally miserable spouse, or old co-worker or some such shlock. And you almost gave him the chance, no the honor, becuase that’s what it would be to them, of killing Kid Rocket? Today of all days?” He kicked the shoulder of the dead merc.

The action drew Nathan to take a step forward, and a scowl from Catspaw, still standing at a half squat as though prepared for him to strike at a moment's notice. She was cautious of him. He could understand it, given his targeting of costumed criminals, and Clay felt just as reluctant about the former villainess - almost yearning for the opportunity for the two to come to blows, old rivals to reaccept the roles they’d once been given and duke it out until only one would be left.

It made sense that way. She was a bad guy, a thief, and a violent maniac when cornered. And he was the guy who killed the maniacs. It worked. Except Clay knew that things were different, that the time called for all of those subtleties and complexities which he felt only muddied the mission, and made it so he’d elected to work alone from the day he’d been cast out of the Planeterium.

Catspaw fingers twitched as though stretching the muscles, lips pulled into a line, almost a grimace as she muttered.

“Ease up on the boy.”

He kept an eye on her as he spoke, noting the way her muscles visibly stiffened at the aggression directed towards Nathan, eyes narrowing and hardly wavering from his every movement. 

So, she’s taken a liking to you, huh kid? The thought was of little surprise to Clay.

The kid was boundless in his optimism, and genuinely caring with the sort of heart Clay was reluctant to believe existed after all he’d seen. 

He wanted nothing more than to bear that mantle and to take on the role of Darkstar, just as Clay once had, and Tracy before him. 

He grumbled, a muttered ‘hurpmh’ in response as he took stock of the two, the look in the face of Nathan - Kid Rocket, an eerily familiar sort of determination forged in cold steel.

It made his heart lurch, catching uneasily in his chest.

He needed for Nathan to avoid making the mistakes and bearing the scars that he had been made to live with, and yet..he was no psychic but it seemed clear the path the boy was going to choose.

Catspaw's head turned a notch, as though she were listening to something on the breeze and after a few seconds he could hear the growing sound of sirens.

One of the local homeless had likely found somewhere to call in and amidst the chaos, KCPD had finally dispatched some officers to the Lower End.

Kid Rocket stiffened, raising his balaclava over his face as he peered nervously down the alley towards the still distant sirens, and in his posture Clay could see the unease, gaze shifting back to the fallen villain. 

“We should go,” she began, though never once did her eyes leave Eclipse as she glared at him.

“Kid Rocket, you should call this in to…Darkstar’s cop friend…Murphy?” she asked, prompting a nod from Nathan. 

“Yeah, him. it’s best none of us are here when they find Eclipse here’s…work.” her words were pointed, as she jabbed a finger at Boa. 

“Besides, they’ll need special transport units if they’re gonna get the big guy down to Fox.” she gestured back down the alley from where she’d come with a point.

“Yeah, uh-okay.” Kid Rocket breathed, eyes momentarily fixed on the corpse between them, the pool of blood catching the distant moonlight and reflecting his gaze back at him. 

After a moment, he stirred himself, pressing past Catspaw and Eclipse with a distracted goodbye as he made his way for the Rocket Bike, raising the phone to his ear.

Clay fixed her with a cold stare, before turning to head back down the alleyway from which he’d come as her hand shot out, closing firmly around his wrist. He came to an immediate halt, his free hand hovering readily over one of the pistols at his side as he spun to face her. 

The expression she wore was firm, though without any sense of that lingering threat that had been present only moments before, lips pulled into what was nearly a grimace and he could see the cuts and bruises across her face now, remnants of her scrap with Gridiron, hidden barely beneath the hood. Her goggles seemed to catch the light, glistening as though with the same burning emotion he could feel from her as she leaned in towards him.

“I know what you’re trying to do,” she muttered, so close and quiet that Clay was certain Kid Rocket would be unable to hear but a few sparse words.

“And believe me, I considered it too. But you can’t. All of Anthony’s work, everything he did as Darkstar, what does it mean if this city goes to hell now?” she asked, and Clay found himself almost taken aback by the genuine emotion in the question.

“It needs him. Kingsport City needs Nathan, and fuck, maybe the world,” she breathed, in in her voice there was something desperate.

“It needs a Darkstar. The Savior is…he’s unattainable, he makes you feel almost more powerless than before, waiting for this…golden man to drop out of the sky and save us, but Darkstar? He was a message. An idea that a normal person could do something, could be more than powerless in a world with flying men and monsters. They need that, and it’s what he was trained for.”

He leaned in, just close enough to be heard, his whisper harsh.

“Fuck what they need,” he hissed, feeling a genuine sort of rage bubbling at the thought

“Kingsport City, the Sovereign, hell even Darkstar none of them deserve him. But if we’re talking needs, you wanna know what he needs, not to be a sacrificial fucking lamb for a dead man’s crusade.”

At that, she stiffened, something in his words - the harshness of them catching her off guard and the moment allowed him to pull his arm free. With that, he made his way across the street leaving the two behind, with a heart that felt heavier than before.