prologue

. . . 1984 . . .

The barracks are overcrowded and swarmed with shades of army green and sweat-slicked bodies. The stink of it rolls off of them in waves, pulsating through the air like its own heartbeat. Grass crunches underneath the weight of heavy booted footsteps outside of the tent they were assigned to, a cramped little thing, an afterthought, smushed in the corner of the camp like the plan B that they clearly were.

It was infinitesimally clear that they were not wanted. It showed in the glaring looks cast their way, the hushed whispers, the sneers on lips that flashed snarling teeth.

Well, what could you do. A job was a job, wasn't it? And this was the biggest yet! Assigned to be the first Supes in the war. Wasn't that something?

He could taste the opportunities about to open up to him on the tip of his tongue, as sweet as vanilla, as intoxicating as brandy, as adrenaline pumping as coke.

So, he let them glare and whisper and sneer and snarl. It was not the first time, surprisingly, that people had done that to him, though that reaction lessened as he climbed the charts and his rankings and appeal grew. It didn't get easier to shut them out, just easier to shut them up.

Next to him, Crimson Countess held onto his elbow and leaned up to purr something into his ear. The words did not catch, scratching down his eardrum and rolling off and into the grass like bullets on his skin. He did not care what his media girlfriend had to say. She was pretty, gorgeous, even. But she was not the one that he would sneak off with into their shoddy tent that night.

"What was that, sweetheart?" He asked, letting his smile catch the sunlight and brighten his voice. Well, he didn't have to like the relationship, but the sun sure did, didn't it? It liked to like him in this situation with her. Or maybe it just liked him. Who wouldn't? Look at those perfect teeth, made effective with free dental care and only the best, too.

She snarled. Just a little. How strange. From her? "I said, don't you think this will be good for us? For Payback?"

"Of course," he answered, blinking in momentary surprise. Why did he have to answer that? Wasn't it obvious to her? Was she this dense? "A huge step up for the lot of you."

He patted her on the shoulder, squeezing the soft skin underneath the red leather of her suit to make it appear at least a little romantic, before turning away. It didn't matter to him if it helped her climb ranks, or the rest of the crew. Really, good for them, but what did he care about it? He didn't. Why waste time pretending to?

He disappeared into the open, flapping fold of their tent. It wasn't small because Edgar would settle for nothing less for them, thank fuck, but it was nothing compared to the Tower. Cots for each of them were scattered haphazardly in the open space underneath the domed polyester. Go bags sat either leaned against the legs of the beds or on the built in pillows, clothes strewn across the cots or the floors. A little table was set up in the corner, his corner, her corner. Their corner.

That's where she was.

Rose Quartz.

His walking pink fucking beacon, bent over the table, her nose snorting up a line like it was her only airway. She looked beautiful like that. He could have watched her for days. The rose colored leather of her suit clung to her body and shaped around it like a glove, her fingers raised to her nose to wipe the excess off and scrape it along the inner line of her gums. When she stood up straight, the breath was knocked straight out of his chest like he was seeing her for the first time all over again.

She smiled. Like it was nothing to her that he was obsessed with every little inch of her. A bright, dazzling thing like the gem she chose to name herself after.

He crossed the space distancing them in one, two, three hulking steps. Brought her into his arms in a scoop that weighed nothing to him, nothing weighed anything to him, and kissed the excess coke off of her teeth. Kissed the love out of her mouth. Breathed her into him.

Until she let out a heady, breathless laugh, one of her palms pressing to that core spot on his suit. Pushed him back enough to see his face. How fucking whipped he must have looked.

And he was. Truly, well and truly, whipped. Are you kidding? Of course he was. This was Rose Quartz of the Malibu district. She had sweeping dark curls that hugged all the way to the mid of her back, these horrifyingly pink eyes that pierced all the way to his soul, skin that never paled due to being from fucking Malibu, and her palms...

He couldn't get started on her palms. You would just have to see them for yourself. If you didn't know already, which, how couldn't you? Fucking Rose Quartz.

"Why are you looking at me like that, Ben?" She asked, that face so furiously sweet he wanted to lick all the sugar off and see the inside of her, if she was just as sweet on the inside. He knew she was. He'd known for years now. They'd gotten past her sour candy exterior long ago.

He shrugged. The corner of his lip was kicked up, though. It always was. "How could I not, Brooke?" He sat her on the edge of the bed closest to her. Carefully. These beds were so shitty. "You're the prettiest thing in the room."

"Hard not to be." She rolled those pink eyes of hers. "Everything here is green. Even you."

"You have always been the prettiest thing, Doll," he corrected, turning his back to prep a line for himself now, "the prettiest in every room."

She hummed next to him, her pink boot jutting out to kick his shin. "What would your girlfriend say about that?"

"My girlfriend can eat my shit." He leaned close to the line and snorted, throwing his head back to take it all in. Life breathed fresh air into his veins and his lungs and his heart. Suddenly, everything in the room was so green, and his Brooke was so vibrantly, beautifully, pink. "How does that sound?"

That smile of hers dazzled all the way through him. It actually sizzled through his veins; he felt it this time. "It sounds like something she actually might like to do."

"You know something I'd like to do?" He leaned in close to her, so close he shared that sizzling breath with her, his Brooke. "I wanna go blow something the fuck up."

There is shouting first. He does not process the gore, or the brains and guts beside him, only the sudden burst of screaming that omits from the crowd of people at the shock of it. Frenzies of armed people start to swarm toward the now battle-ridden ground, toward where the initial shots fired from.

Ben drops the grenade launcher, which if he was being technical, did not at all alert the enemy to their location. They already knew. Ben drops his heroic act and the brave, arrogant stunt, and slips into Soldier Boy in an instant.

It takes him all of three instances to locate his Brooke.

The battle has not reached him yet. He was the center of attention. The peak of the trifecta. He realizes then why their tent is so far back compared to the others; they are the last resort. The thing to be protected. A valuable asset. A flag to be captured. If all human armies have to be eliminated for them to have to leap into battle, then so be it.

It unsettles Ben, but mostly because it's untrue. Half of his group has already been spread then in the destruction of it. What a load of horseshit that plan was.

His Brooke is one of them. She has three on her. The center of her on trifecta. Her eyes glow brighter, brighter, and look, are you paying attention? Now is the time to, if you've never seen her palms. She raises them like she did to his chest, fingers splayed against one of the opposition's armored skin, and in an instant, his whole exterior turns into pink crystal. It swallows him.

Then he bursts. Gore and blood and mess splatters the dewed grass.

She rears her elbow back to the one approaching from behind her, and in the ricochet of the hit, flattens her palm on the one coming from her right's chest, and he too explodes into a crystalline human bomb.

The enemy who merely got elbowed has the bright idea to run, but Rose Quartz is as close to a member of Payback as one can be. She cocks her head at his turned back. Both of her palms raise and two rays of pale pink power shoot out of them. He doesn't even turn to crystal. He just bursts.

He could watch her fight all day. He would, too, if he had the luxury of time and the assurance that she would return from this to him in one piece.

But neither of those things would come, because this was real battle. Not something he often saw, but he did see it sometimes. Rose Quartz was not familiar with war battling and she was handling herself well, but he needed to reach her part of the circle he laid in his mind, just in case she fell. Just in case.

How was he to know how fast things would crumble?

The way that Babylon crumbled.

His own team. An ambush.

How was he to know that the biggest threat on this field was not of the enemies coming from every side, killing the human soldiers and destroying their camp, but of the people he built a reputation with?

It was not until he looked over and saw his Rose, his Brooke, his flower, with her petals crushed into the bloodied grass, that he realized she was not in on this coup too. And it was only a small relief. Because where would they go now? What was the plan with them?

And so the gemstone and the soldier were flown to die. Except they did not die, no matter how badly they wanted to. No, they lived. Again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

. . . 2022 . . .

Soldier Boy destroyed the whole fucking building.

That is how Ben would describe it now, walking through the streets of a city bursting with lights and color and sound he can't possibly begin to understand. There's a sick, angry pulsing in his head, pounding away to the tune of his heartbeat. Something he hasn't yet remembered but is trying to.

All he can think about now is the people's faces on the bus.

Dawn of the Seven.

Painted as the new Hero group to be worshiped. As if he was nothing, as if he fell off. That was enough to make him vomit. It was only a little reassurance that none of his group was still being praised and boosted.

Little.

There it was again. A ping. Something he should know. Something he should know.

His face breaks into a simmering scowl and he turns. If he's going to be out, he's going to need clothes that aren't cryogenically frozen and stained with his blood, sweat, and piss. Not his tears. For all the shit he went through, he did not fucking cry.

Ben turned to the nearest clothing store, he assumed. How could he tell with a name like Pinko? The only sign it had clothes was the fake men dressed in clothes in the window. Even then, it was hardly anything he would wear, but it would have to do. Something would. With his senses returning, he really was starting to stink, and was his beard seriously this long? To his chest?

He did not bother paying. He left his discarded clothes on the dressing room floor. Stan Edgar would pay for it. It would be charged to his tab, surely, because he was Soldier Boy. These shop owners had a tax or something that took that off. He was positive of it. And if they didn't, fuck them, he just came back from the dead.

His next stop was an airport.

He was getting the fuck out of Russia.

Ben made it to Manhattan without any trouble and only a little concern. There was no mention of him in any of the plane magazines or books. And when he asked the stewardess for a magazine, she looked appalled. Did he seriously look so bad? He would have to fix it.

Coming back to life had his senses on high alert. Not just returned but running rampant. They were always so high, but since being unmedicated legally and illegally after all the testing, his withdrawals were hitting him high speed. He needed to find The Legend. He needed a lot of things. He needed his suit. Something that wasn't from fucking Pinko.

Ben's spine went entirely rigid.

Pink. A body covered in pink spandex. Eyes made of rose pink glass. Palms with glowing orbs of rose quartz crystal power in their center, pulsing, bursting laser lines of incinerating fire–

His Rose Quartz. Brooke Riley.

Back in Russia. Abandoned.

Fucking exploded.

He did that.

His palms were shaking fiercely now, not just due to his withdrawal but the anger at himself and the guilt eating in his veins. Tremors racked through his body.

He thought of how it felt to have machine guns unloaded into his open mouth. Fires lit on his open skin. Needles in his eyes.

All of that done to him, and what to her? All of that done to him, and he got out, only to end up killing her. To be the one to cause her demise after they both survived it. Locked in cryochambers for decades.

His chest lit with a burst of warmth. He sensed the bomb about to detonate before it did, he always did, but how could he stop it? He killed the only girl to ever light a fire in him. The only one to detonate him and live, to break through his walls and nestle into his bones.

Ben tried to remember how she taught him to calm down back in Russia. When their testing rooms were next to each other and the walls were thin, before the labcoats realized that they were reliant on each other. Her voice frail and gravely, nails scraping against the plaster.

Do you wanna hear me sing? She would ask, and he'd laugh through the blood in his throat and his teeth, spitting out wads of it on the tiled floors.

He'd say yes. He always said yes.

Ben focused on the music outside of the shop he stopped in front of. He tried so hard to listen to her voice in the instruments of it, searching for inklings of her, an anchor to grasp onto so he didn't burst.

The voice he was met with was not hers, but Russian. Just as familiar as hers but so fiercely unwelcome that his entire body shuddered in a recoil.

Gunfire in his mouth. Fire on his skin. Needles in his eyes. Knives tearing through flesh.

With a scream tearing through his vocal cords, Ben exploded.